If it was only about the footy, Andrew 'Joey' Johns might have endured as a true Immortal of rugby league. And his big brother Matty might have hovered eternally somewhere close to those gods of the game.

But for the Johns brothers, it's been a long time since it was just about the footy, the game the Cessnock boys learned at the knee of their coalminer dad and their grandfather, both of whom played for the Goannas in the coalfields comp.

Andrew and Matty earned the status of legends on the field with the Newcastle Knights, a side-by-side combination – as halfback and five-eighth – for nine seasons. Both were State of Origin and national representatives.

Both, however, confirmed their status as mere mortals with their off-field behaviour. They were flawed, at times vulgar and disgraceful. They found and made trouble for themselves.

And yet the code is forgiving of its legends. In retirement from the field, both brothers have forged lucrative television careers as NRL commentators – Matt now at Fox Sports and Andrew at Nine. In recent months it seemed the brothers were destined to "play" side-by-side again, as Fox attempted to lure Andrew from Nine.

His future looked solid. At least did until his latest lapse. At the airport at Toowoomba last Friday night, an appalled Helen Wright, a married mother of three, posted on Facebook a picture of Johns passed out on the floor. She revealed she had refused request for a kiss from the "severely intoxicated" Johns. So the Nine Network banned him from its grand final coverage and fellow Nine commentator Ray Hadley would tell his radio listeners Johns' behaviour was "abhorrent".

In 2009, it was Matt Johns who fell out of favour with Nine. It stood him down from his role as NRL commentator and co-host of The Footy Show following his disclosures about his and his then Cronulla teammates' sexual encounter with a 19-year-old woman while on tour in New Zealand in 2002. Police investigated but never laid charges over the woman's complaint that she did not give consent to the 10 or more men involved.

Seven years later, she told her story to the ABC's Four Corners. Matt Johns insisted in an interview with Nine that the encounter was consensual, but he regretted it and spoke of the pain for his family.

But Nine invited Matt Johns back to the mic. He refused. He went to Seven and later to Fox Sports.

It was in 2007 when Andrew Johns – widely acknowledged as the greatest halfback in the game – announced his retirement. Months later, he was arrested on the London Underground for fare evasion. Police also found him in possession of an ecstasy tablet.

His initial claim that someone must have slipped it into his pocket was met with derision. Johns soon confessed, on The Footy Show, that he had been a regular user of ecstasy during his playing career. He revealed that he suffered from depression and bipolar disorder. He was self-medicating.

There was was broad support for Johns. He soon revealed more in his candid autobiography, The Two of Me.

Perhaps it was the other Andrew Johns who behaved so appallingly, yet again, last Friday night.

It is not Johns' first indiscretion while working for Nine. It was Johns who tipped off his mate, the big-punting brothel owner Eddie Hayson, that a horse called More Joyous was "off". He said he got that information from his Nine colleague Tom Waterhouse, the son of the horse's trainer, Gai. Tom refuted any suggestion of wrongdoing and said he backed the horse, but the horse's owner, John Singleton, in a fiery outburst took it out on Gai.

A stewards' inquiry cleared Tom Waterhouse and fined Singleton $15,000 for bringing the sport into disrepute, but Gai Waterhouse appealed against a charge of failing to report the horse's condition and won.

Johns worried then that his career at Nine might have been doomed. But it wasn't.

He had emerged as a popular commentator. The game and its fans wanted him at the mic.

Nobody yet has suggested his day is up. Rugby league has a long history of forgiving its bad boys.