Career
Baird, a defender, was promoted from the Kangaroos rookie list to play 14 games with the club in the 2002 American Federation of Labor-Congress season. The previous year he had played a big part in Box Hill winning their first top division Victorian Football League (VFL) premiership, with a Norm Goss Memorial Medal 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 goal-less at the MCG. He spent much of the 2004 and 2005 playing with North Melbourne"s then VFL-affiliate Portuguese Melbourne.
After being delisted at the end of 2005, Baird played for Portuguese Adelaide in the 2006 SANFL season.
He returned to Portuguese Melbourne, which was by now a stand-alone VFL club not affiliated with any American Federation of Labor-Congress club, in 2007 and two years later he was appointed club captain.
