Of all the jerseys Andrew Johns has worn, just one remains in his home.

His NSW jersey from State of Origin II, 2005.

“I’ve actually told the kids, ‘This is a family heirloom, this is not to be sold or anything, this is to stay in the family’,” he told Wide World of Sports this week.

The jersey still bears dirt and grass stains from a night at Sydney Olympic Park — June 15, 20 years ago — that forever cemented his legend.

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STATE OF ORIGIN II: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW AND START TIME

‘Joey’ captained a 2-1 series win for NSW in 2003 but did not play Origin the following year after tearing an ACL early in the season. By the time of Origin II in 2005, he’d played just one game in seven weeks — against Brisbane, upon his return from a broken jaw — and eight matches in 22 months.

Johns had been struggling with bipolar disorder on top of the injuries. He considered retirement.

Curiously, it was an iconic Queensland coach who did him a good turn in those dark times.

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“I ran into Wayne Bennett and I said, ‘I’m coming back from this knee injury, I’m having nightmares, I’ve lost all of my confidence, I don’t think I can play again. I don’t think I can get to that level where I’ve played before and if I can’t get there, I think I’m going to retire’,” Johns said on Sunday Night with Matty Johns in 2019.

“He said, ‘Look, there’s this program at the Brisbane institute of sport where they’re rehabbing knees, why don’t you come up here and try it out?’ I went up there, there was two trainers who whipped me back into shape.

“I went up there for one week, the next week I broke my jaw, so I pretty much went up there for six weeks, seven weeks in isolation and trained. I’ve never trained so hard, I’ve never been so fit.

“I had so many knockers at that time saying, ‘He’s finished’. Once I got the shot to go back to Origin, I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that I’d kill it.”

He wrote in his autobiography, The Two of Me: “There were so many doubters, including ex-players, saying in the press that I was underdone and wouldn’t perform. I was licking my lips — the more they were writing it the more I could feel myself building up. Whether it was my bipolar I’m not sure, but I was thinking, ‘I’m going to show you people’.”

Brett Kimmorley was dropped as Blues halfback after throwing an infamous intercept pass for Maroons flyer Matt Bowen to score a match-winning extra time try in game one of 2005. Trent Barrett, the five-eighth in that game, was then selected for Origin II in jersey No.7 alongside Braith Anasta at No.6.

Johns was disappointed not to be named. Coach Ricky Stuart and a Blues selector called to tell him he would be picked for game three.

But then Barrett injured a quad muscle in camp. Stuart called Johns again and asked if he had his boots ready.

“I’ll be there in two hours,” Johns replied.

Johns had already won four Origin series, three Dally M Medals, two World Cups and two premierships. The hype was gigantic and he immediately made his presence felt.

“It was all anyone was talking about,” recalled NSW teammate Nathan Hindmarsh, on Fox League special Brilliant Blues.

“The amount of confidence Joey gives a side … he was Joey Johns, but he demands excellence as well on the training paddock. If you weren’t in the spot you needed to be in, he’d hammer you, so you’d remember, ‘Look, I’ve got to be there the next time’.

“But he just instilled so much confidence within the side. Kicking game, vision. Him and Ricky Stuart talking together, we had a good game plan.”

The blueprint was for Johns to move around Queensland’s big pack as much as possible in the opening 20 minutes, then take on the line once the Maroons forwards were tired.

“The call was ‘Wizard’; when I heard that call from the bench it was ‘be ready to run’,” Johns wrote in The Two of Me.

“When the call came I could see the holes in the Queensland defence as they tired. I had a great side around me — Braith Anasta played out of his skin, Anthony Minichiello and I roomed together and struck a great combination, and the forward pack were outstanding. We’d run them around so much the big Queensland boys were out on their feet in the last 20 minutes.”

Johns had a hand in virtually everything and signed off by teasing the Maroons defence by drifting right, then turning it back sharply for Knights teammate Danny Buderus to score virtually untouched from close range.

Final score: 32-22, made to look more respectable by a pair of late Queensland tries.

Johns was man of the match. It was an unforgettable performance that he rates as his finest.

He was elated at full-time. Matty Johns was then working the sideline for Channel 9 and the brothers shared a hug after full-time.

“He just completely carved them up. One of the great Origin games,” Matty recalled last year on his podcast.

“What it was, was his ability to elevate himself emotionally. That’s what great players do.”

Yet Johns later cut a subdued figure.

“Cathrine (Mahoney, his partner at the time) was next to me on the team bus when we went back to the hotel after the game, and she told me she was worried about how I was going to be that night, that I might have come off a high into one of my depressions because I was so quiet. I turned to her and said, ‘That was one of the great moments of my football career tonight and I’m just taking it in’,” he wrote in The Two of Me.

“I knew straight away how significant it was. I’ve never been one to boast about what I’d done on the football field but that night I’d never been prouder of an achievement; no one but me knew what I had come back from to put in that performance and how hard I had trained.

“And I feel the third game of the series was one of my best games too. In that game we defended for five sets in a row, then the game changed and it was 18-0 our way.”

Final score: 32-10, a humiliation for Queensland at Suncorp Stadium that won the series for NSW and sealed a three-peat, a triumph preceding the Maroons dynasty era.

It was Johns’ fifth series win and the last of his 23 Origin games.

Three years later, he was named Halfback of the Century and in 2012 crowned the eighth rugby league Immortal.