"Round 22 at Telstra Dome was a very ugly night for us all - as the players out there and as a club," Johnson said.
"Certainly we haven't forgotten that and we've got to go out there on Thursday night and show we've improved from last year. In Round 1 we weren't great, on Saturday night we were a lot better and we've got to take it up that notch further on Thursday night."
The Lions had a light-ish training session at the Gabba this afternoon, in a week in which the squad will be focussed on recovery. Five-day breaks ahead of the annual Easter Thursday fixture have been common in recent years and the Lions are now "old-hat" at dealing with the shortened preparation.
"There's been a lot of rubs, a lot of stretching and lot of plunging with the five day break, so that we can come up good on Thursday night," Johnson explained.
"We had a fair pre-season this year. We did a lot more running and stuff like that, so our base is pretty good at the moment and hopefully we can just improve on it in the games week-to-week."
Johnson is one player whose fitness will almost certainly be sharpened every time he hits the field. Lions coach Leigh Matthews said at his Monday press conference that new rules and interpretations had defenders doing more running and Johnson confirmed as such this morning.
"There is a lot more running. As a defender you are probably not in the back 50 as much - you are more up the ground," he said.
"You do a bit of running around the defensive 50 but it's more up the ground and back, up and back. It used to be just around the defensive 50 but we are doing a lot more running with the new rules like the quick kick-ins - the ball comes down quicker and you've got to be able to rebound as well."
The Lions defence will be out to put a stop to St Kilda's crack forward line on Thursday - an attacking unit that ran rampant in the final game of the 2005 regular season.
Included among the Saints' dangermen is Stephen Milne, who kicked an incredible 11.0 when the sides last met. Johnson says he and his fellow defenders will be hoping to keep Milne quiet in more ways than one.
"Milney has a bit of a say out on the ground, especially when he's going well. When he's not going so well you don't really hear so much of him," Johnson said.
"The plans are to keep him down, keep him quiet and not let him have too much of the ball."
The win over Essendon was enjoyed by the playing group, Johnson said, in part because of the turnaround in from the previous week's performance in Geelong. But it didn't take long for the Lions to look ahead to the mouth-watering clash with the Saints.
"As soon as we got in the dressing room on Saturday night, we set our focus straight on Thursday night," Johnson said.
"We lived it up for a couple of hours but then we realised that we had to focus on our recovery and head on towards Thursday night's game. With a five-day break, you've just got to jump on that as soon as possible."
