Giants punter Jamie Gillan did not travel back from London with the team earlier this week, instead finally returning late Wednesday – and on Thursday, he cleared up exactly what was the reason he was still in the U.K.
“To clear things up for you guys, there was no 'stuck in London' or anything like that. This is something that we knew we had to do for a while. I just had to get my passport, P1 Visa, extended to get back into the country. So, we did,” Gillan said. “Humongous thanks to the Giants' organization and Laurie Tisch for allowing that to happen, talking to the right people and the people at the U.S. Embassy. Fantastic people there. They were really helpful because those people were quite involved. We had a goal to get me back in two days and we did it, so I'm back here.”
The issue is that Gillan, who is Scottish, came to the U.S. about a decade ago on a NATO visa, as his father was stationed in southern Maryland as a member of the Royal Air Force, and that visa was never switched to an actual work visa when he joined the NFL.
Extending the visa was something Gillan would have had to do in the offseason had the team not been going to London, because he had to be there in person to do so, but both he and the team knew that it was going to be a process that would keep him overseas a little longer than the rest of the team.
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“I wish I would've been on the plane with my teammates but it's just how the cookie crumbles,” Gillan said. “We had all the right paperwork though.”
It wasn’t exactly a vacation though, as Gillan stayed in London with his family, and was able to use a gym and use his iPad to watch film before getting on a plane back to New York around dinner time Wednesday.
He was a little jetlagged on Thursday, but said “I’ll figure it out” and that he would be good to go for Sunday’s game against the Ravens – although special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey did have a contingency plan for both the London game and this weekend just in case (and no, it wasn’t Graham Gano).
“He’s ready to rock, but you always (have a backup plan); when you deal with that kind of stuff – embassies, and policies, and NATO visas – you never know what'll happen,” McGaughey said. “We had a contingency plan, so we were ready.”
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