JACK Johnson hopes to become the second member of a schoolboys’ football team to make it big – only this time in a different sport.
The Warrington youngster played alongside Arsenal’s Rob Holding for the Manchester borough of Tameside.
Now he is making it in Super League while the England Under-21 defender attempts to crack it at the Gunners following a reported £2.5 million move from Bolton.
But some things will never compare, even if Johnson, who went to a different school but has remained good friends with Holding, makes it big in rugby league.
“We played and competed against each other in football and athletics,” recalled Johnson, who scored in the Wolves’ 24-14 defeat at Salford on Saturday, and played football as a winger.
“We played football together for Tameside a few years ago.
“Rob played central midfield back then and basically he used to run the show. You knew he was just that bit better than everyone else.
“He’s taken off and done well – it’s all happened overnight.
“He couldn’t get a game at Bolton, then he had a breakthrough, now he’s at Arsenal. It was all a bit mad for him as it happened very quickly, within six months.”
Johnson, 20, has played in Warrington’s last two games – at full-back when Kurt Gidley fell ill and on the wing when Matty Russell pulled out.
He splits his time between his home town of Audenshaw, Manchester – where a large four-bedroomed detached house can be bought for as little as £210,000 and three-bedroomed semis cost in the region of £170,000 – and Warrington.
But he knows life as a rugby league player just does not hold a candle at times to the Premier League.
He added: “We get everything at Warrington, we don’t go short of anything, but they all have swimming pools at their homes and everything at Arsenal.
“It’s a crazy comparison between football and anything, though.”
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