More than 25,000 fans piled in to the Cbus Super Stadium for Jarryd Hayne’s NRL return party – but it was New Zealand Warriors playmaker Shaun Johnson who stole the show.

The crowd – more than double an average attendance for a Gold Coast Titans home fixture this season – had to wait until the 28th minute before Hayne came off the bench.

And although he showed glimpses of the talent that saw him become one of the world’s best players at Parramatta, Hayne also played a hand in a try scored by the Warriors as the visitors came away with a 24-14 triumph.

Hayne reneged on his promise to rejoin Parramatta if he was to ever come back to Australia by signing a multi-million-dollar two-year deal with the Titans on Wednesday.

His signature ended an 18-month stint in which he played NFL for the San Francisco 49ers and attempted to make Fiji’s Rugby Sevens squad for the Rio Olympics.

Despite his side’s defeat, Hayne was encouraged by his performance.

“It’s great to be back,” he told Fox Sports.

“I was starting to get a couple of classy touches. We probably gave it away there at the end but it is something to work on.

“The last 18 months I’ve travelled a lot of mountains.

Hayne had to wait before coming on. Photo: Getty

“I’ve come back to something where I know what to expect. I always knew it was going to hurt and it was going to be tough to survive.

“You can never prepare for a NRL game. It’s [about] getting thrown in the deep end and surviving.

“Good to get the minutes under the belt and hopefully it’s going to help me in the long run.”

Hayne added that Titans fans should expect more from him as he gets to grips with rugby league again, and the team’s gameplan.

“The more I play with the guys, the better I will be,” he added.

“You always want to have that perfect game and that try I kind of set up … it was a planned move.

“[I have to] keep improving. Keep getting better each week. Solid effort [today] with 50-odd minutes, come back next week, be better and hopefully [we can] push for finals.”

Johnson set up two second-half tries to break a 10-10 half-time deadlock, as the Warriors (24 points) leapfrogged the Titans (23) into seventh on the competition ladder.

Hayne enjoyed being back on the ball. Photo: Getty

The Titans’ investment in Hayne paid instant dividends to the club’s bank balance, with the attendance easily surpassing this year’s previous best home crowd of 21,080 against Brisbane in round five.

It was the best Titans’ crowd at the Cbus Super Stadium, where they have averaged just under 12,000 this season, since 27,026 attended a qualifying final against the Warriors in 2010.

Hayne made an impact on his first play as a Titan, nailing Warriors’ back rower Bodene Thompson in a crunching ball-and-all tackle when he seemed destined to score.

The dual Dally M winner then out-jumped two Warriors players to snare a bomb at the other end of the field, his efforts nearly ending in a try for his new team.

The Warriors were too good. Photo: Getty

Early in the second half, Hayne drove Warriors star Johnson on to his back in a big one-on-one tackle, the Kiwi international spilling the ball from the impact.

But Johnson had the last laugh, first sending Simon Mannering over with a clever short pass before then feeding Solomone Kata after David Fusitu’a had run almost the length of the field following an intercept off Hayne.

The ex-San Francisco 49er did finish the game with a try assist, Hayne’s 20-metre grubber resulting in the final try of the match to winger Anthony Don, but it mattered little to the outcome.

– with ABC