New Zealand Kiwis head coach Michael Maguire has confirmed Shaun Johnson is a chance of being selected for the end of year Pacific Championship.
While squad selection rules are yet to be confirmed, it's likely that each nation involved - Australia, New Zealand and Samoa in the Cup, and Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands in the Bowl tournament - will be able to pick somewhere between 22 and 24 players. 24 was the number each nation took to the Rugby League World Cup at the end of last year in England.
New Zealand, who will play a game in Melbourne and a game in Auckland before potentially featuring in the final to be played at home in Hamilton, will have plenty of key decisions to make around team selections.
The most notable of those may be in the halves.
For the 2022 World Cup campaign, Dylan Brown, Kieran Foran and Jahrome Hughes were all taken to England as the three key options to fill the number six and seven jerseys.
Off the back of a poor year in the NRL, that left Shaun Johnson out the outer.
But the Warriors' half has been among the NRL's best this year and could be impossible to leave out of a Kiwis' squad still stinging from their semi-final exit at last year's World Cup.
Speaking at the launch of the Pacific Cup tournament, coach Maguire said Johnson would be under consideration.
"Shaun is going to assess that when the time comes and see how his body is," Maguire said per AAP at the launch in Brisbane of the Pacific Championships.
"His big focus at the moment is obviously trying to win it for the Warriors but it has been nice to see how he has been playing.
"Shaun was obviously disappointed at the back end of last season and obviously didn't come away to the World Cup.
"One thing he did say is, 'I will be back. I want to have another crack at the international space'."
Squads are expected to be selected after the NRL grand final, with the international series to kick off just a fortnight later.
Aiding Johnson's chance of selection is that the Warriors are set to make a deep run into the finals, with the side currently sitting in third - the same can't be said for Brown and Foran, with the Eels in a struggle to make the finals and the Titans out of contention.
