John Baird (born 11 June 1980) is an

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

er who played with the

Kangaroos Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...

in the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

(AFL). Baird, a defender, was promoted from the Kangaroos rookie list to play 14 games with the club in the

2002 AFL season The 2002 AFL season was the 106th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season featured sixt ...

.AFL Tables: John Baird
/ref> The previous year he had played a big part in Box Hill winning their first top division

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...

(VFL) premiership, with a

Norm Goss Memorial Medal The Norm Goss Memorial Medal is awarded to the player judged to be the best afield in the Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier r ...

winning performance in the grand final. A regular fixture in the Kangaroos side during the 2003 season, Baird played in the first 20 rounds and earned the only Brownlow vote of his career when he kept

Nick Riewoldt Nicholas Fredrick Riewoldt ( ; born 17 October 1982) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He was the first draft selection in the 2000 AFL draft. He was the ...

goal-less at the

MCG The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadium in the Southern Hem ...

. He spent much of the 2004 and 2005 playing with North Melbourne's then

Port Melbourne Port Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Melbourne and Port Phillip local government areas. Port Melbourne recorded a populatio ...

. After being delisted at the end of 2005, Baird played for

Port Adelaide Port Adelaide is a port-side region of Adelaide, approximately northwest of the Adelaide CBD. It is also the namesake of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield council, a suburb, a federal and state electoral division and is the main port for the ...

in the 2006 SANFL season. He returned to Port Melbourne, which was by now a stand-alone VFL club not affiliated with any AFL club, in 2007 and two years later he was appointed club captain. In 2011 he captained Port Melbourne to the VFL premiership, and the team won all 21 games for the season, making it a perfect season.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baird, John 1980 births Australian rules footballers from Victoria (Australia) North Melbourne Football Club players Port Adelaide Magpies players Box Hill Football Club players Port Melbourne Football Club players Living people