Travel bug tipped to cut short Linton’s stint with Giants
GEELONG West Giants are not expecting to see much more of former Ocean Grove captain James Linton as they prepare to welcome back a host of players.
Linton stepped out for his GDFL debut with West on Saturday after receiving a late callup. The Giants even had to loan him a pair of boots.
But coach Mitch Wight said they were preparing to be without the Colac Tigers premiership player for the rest of the year.
He said Linton was planning on leaving to travel around Australia in the coming weeks.
“I’m not sure how much we’ll see of Jim, if we will see him again or not,” Wight said.
“I think he finishes work this week or the week after, so (he will be leaving) pretty soon I would have thought.
“With the weather down here starting to turn to winter, I think he’ll probably head up north pretty quick.”
Geelong West had about “eight or nine unavailable” for the weekend’s game against Inverleigh and a call was made to Linton about 8am on Saturday to see if he was interested in having a kick.
“We made the phone call to see what he was doing and he said he’d be happy to pull the boots on,” Wight said. “We literally had to provide the boots as well. Once we did ask him, he was super keen to get involved and help out on the day.”
Geelong West has a 2-3 record but had close results against Werribee Centrals (third) and East Geelong (fifth) before the weekend’s 46-point defeat against the unbeaten Inverleigh.
Wight expects to welcome back Scott Galloway, Curtis Hoare, Kaiden Long, Tom Lundberg, Haydn Slater, Harley Lewis and potentially James
Peers for Saturday’s match against Corio. Wight said he remained “extremely confident” Geelong West could contend for a top-five berth.
“Before this week, the two games we lost were both under two goals to teams that are going to be thereabouts,” he said.
“I think we’re not far away. We showed on Saturday as well, the way we started to keep Inverleigh scoreless for the first quarter was fantastic.”