On locker No.25, if you read from bottom to top, you’ll find the names of Brendan Fevola, Alex Jesaulenko, George Ferry and the late Jim Baird. Baird’s name was the first consigned to the precious space, by virtue of his 100^th senior game for Carlton way back in 1950.

By then, he’d already forged his handsome reputation in a variety of sporting pursuits. A member of the famous 1945 and ’47 Grand Final triumphs, Baird was a tearaway pacemen in two district pennant teams for the Carlton Cricket Club, represented Victoria at first class level, and ran third in the ’46 Stawell Gift.

Baird represented Carlton in 130 games, in a career interrupted by wartime duties. A local boy, he’d joined the club on invitation in 1941, and completed his senior debut in the opening round of the ’41 season against Essendon at Princes Park.

Ten years later, co-incidentally against Essendon at the same venue, Baird played his last – an infamous contest in which John Coleman’s report for striking Harry Caspar cost him his place in the ’51 Grand Final.

Last week, Jim’s son Steve Baird and daughters Sue Freestone and Diane Johnstone, together with Jim’s granddaughter Amy Henderson and her husband Kurt, returned to the old ground to be photographed at Dad’s No.25 locker.

Sue said that the return to the place proved exciting and particularly comforting given that their mother Joan only died last year (Jim died in 2003) – “and Dad and Mum were a duo”.

The Baird family in front of the famous No.25 locker. (Photo: Carlton Football Club)

“Mum and Dad were such a team and Mum’s life at Carlton meant equally as much to her as it did to Dad,” Sue said.

“Such was Jim’s commitment to sport that there was no off season . . . and Mum was always there with him. For us to lose Mum after losing Dad ten years ago signaled the end of an era, so to come back to Princes Park has rekindled happy memories because we spent much of our childhood there.

“In the early days when Dad was playing, another sister and brother a bit older than me were taken along. I was born in ’55 and Dad had finished playing by then, but after he retired he still went to every home game and to all the past player luncheons, and we kids went with him. For us, Princes Park was like another back yard, and to go back there is like coming home.”

Sue said that she hadn’t returned to the scene of her father’s great on-field feats since Princes Park’s last hurrah in 2005 “when my sister and I bawled our eyes out at the end”.

But for all of the Baird siblings, the family link with the Carlton ground will forever remain, for Carlton was where Jim spent his formative years, married Joan and made so many more pals.

“I’m still friends with Ken Hands because those friendships forged by Dad lasted a lifetime. The footballers of his era were like uncles to me, and most of them have gone in time,” Sue said.

“Dad’s nickname was ‘Bones’ but he didn’t have a bad bone in his body. Everyone called him ‘Gentleman Jim’ and I never heard anyone say a bad word about him. He was very gracious and a good mate to everybody.”