He started his senior rugby at the Eastern Suburbs club, then moved to Randwick and then played at Sydney Uni for a spell.

Johnson was selected out of second-grade to trial for the 1957–58 Australia rugby union tour of Britain, Ireland and France but did not make the squad.

[1] Johnson started featuring in representative sides from 1958 playing for South Harbour and for the Australian Barbarians against the visiting New Zealand Maori.

Howell asserts that Johnson made an affable tourist, was witty and humorous and was welcomed in the rugby tour environment.

[2] Later that year the Wallabies undertook the 1962 Australia rugby union tour of New Zealand with John Thornett as squad captain.

Johnson was in a victorious Wallaby side in 1963 who beat England before he then was selected for the 1963 Australia rugby union tour of South Africa.

He played in six of the ten matches of that tour and was replaced in the 2nd Test against France which, at 34 years of age, marked the end of a remarkable representative career.