Golden Square’s BFNL premiership hopes have been dealt a body blow with star forward Travis Baird to miss the rest of the season.
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Baird, arguably the most influential player in the competition this year, looks set to undergo surgery to repair his injured hamstring.
“It’s upsetting for Travis more than anything,’’ Bulldogs’ coach Bernie Haberman said.
“He’s getting another opinion (on the injury), but whether he needs surgery or not it looks more probable than not that his season is finished.”
Baird was having a career-best season in the BFNL. He’d kicked 49 goals in 12 games and his physical presence inside forward 50 made his team-mates walk taller and made him one of the hardest men to stop in the game.
“It’s hard for Travis because he’s such a competitor and he doesn’t like not being out there,’’ Haberman said.
“From a team point of view we move on. It’s a body blow, but it’s not the end of the world.
“At the weekend we showed that we have lots of different options. I’m not worried about our goal kicking power. We’d love to have Travis out there because of his experience and he’s a match winner, but we can still kick winning scores without him.
“Eaglehawk lost Matt Gretgrix and they’ve shown they can still kick big scores.”
Travis Baird’s younger brother, Adam, appeared to injure his knee in the win over South Bendigo, but Haberman said the classy midfielder would be fit to play Kyneton this Saturday.
Defender Michael Dalrymple will resume against the Tigers after missing the game against the Bloods because of a minor hamstring injury.
“If it was a final on Saturday he probably would have played,’’ Haberman said of Dalrymple.
The impressive win against South Bendigo saw the Bulldogs lock away a top three berth and the double chance for the finals.
“It’s nice to know that we’ll finish in the top three, but at the same time we still want to play strong footy over the last two weeks of the (home and away) season,’’ Haberman said.
“We don’t want to be flirting with form now. We have a huge game against Kyneton this week. Potentially, we might have to play Kyneton in September, so we’d like to get one up on them this week.”