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DICK Johnson hit his rock, and consequently his rock bottom, 10 years before Adam Reynolds was born.
Which is why, right now, here in a private room on the second floor of Souths Juniors, the greying V8 legend is providing the gun Rabbitohs halfback with some Bathurst 1000 background.
Explaining not only to Reynolds but the entire Souths squad how that rock, that moment on Mount Panorama way back in 1980, was something like his equivalent of twice being rolled one game short of an NRL Grand Final.
"We mortgaged the house, sacrificed everything to run that car,'' Johnson explains of a moment that has come to define him.
V8 legend Dick Johnson pictured with Nathan Merrit, Adam Reynolds and coach Michael Macguire. Source: News Limited
"It's why that crash, it should've been the end of me."
And continuing, Johnson walks this mob of tattooed tyros through the years of debt, the years of repairing cars in his own garage that were behind him not just competing on that particular Bathurst 1000 weekend, but leading it.
The battling Queenslander suddenly ready to collect on all those years of sacrifice when, coming up through The Cutting with a white flag waving and tow truck on track, he swerved . . . only to hit a rock whose mysterious presence is up there with the JFK assassination.
"It should've ruined him,'' explains Souths coach Michael Maquire, the self-confessed petrol head who approached Johnson about speaking after reading his recently-released biography.
"But that's the thing about Dick, he's spent a lifetime fighting back."
V8 legend Dick Johnson pictured with Nathan Merrit, Adam Reynolds and coach Michael Macguire. Source: News Limited
Indeed, with Johnson in town for the Sydney 500, Maguire knew there was no better man to help ready the Bunnies for 2014.
Understanding that be it a boulder, bankruptcy or that brutal Bathurst treeline smash, time and again this legendary Ford driver has overcome.
A truth recognised even by that halfback born 10 years too late to see it.
"Past couple of years, yeah, we've come close to a Grand Final, had some broken hearts,'' Reynolds shrugs.
"But nothing in life needs to be a negative if you take something from it."
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