STEVE Johnson rejected a lucrative offer to join Greater Western Sydney in last year's trade period in the belief he could win a fourth premiership at Geelong this year.



Johnson told SEN radio on Sunday that he did not seriously consider GWS's long-term offer near the end of last October's trade period, even though he was only contracted at Geelong to the end of 2015.

"I really didn't get a good chance to consider it because I was overseas on a golf trip and I think it was a day or two before the (trade) deadline finished," Johnson said.

"At the end of the day, my initial reaction was that I believed I had a really good opportunity to play in a premiership again next season at Geelong and that's pretty much as far as I considered it.

"I was flattered by the offer from GWS to come up there for however long it was, but I'm certainly happy where I am at the moment.

"It probably wasn't the time for me to really look at that sort of thing."

Two weeks ago, Geelong revealed that Johnson had been given time off from training after experiencing soreness in the foot that sidelined him for four of the Cats' final five games last season, including their semi-final loss to North Melbourne.

The 2007 Norm Smith medallist said he had started running again on Sunday and fully expected to be fit for the start of the season.

"It was just a little bit of bone stress, it's not even really stress. I had bone stress beforehand and it healed up pretty well over the off-season," Johnson said.

"I've been doing a lot of running (this pre-season) and I came in one morning and my foot was a tiny bit sore and they took the precautionary approach by saying ‘stay off it for a week’ and sent me to the Gold Coast.