Bairnsdale recorded its second win of the Gippsland League season last Saturday,  defeating Warragul by 43 points at the Bairnsdale Oval.
With no other football being played in East Gippsland on the Queen’s Birthday weekend and with the added attraction of the Big Freeze fundraiser, the game attracted an excellent crowd.
Bairnsdale welcomed back Simon Deery and John Gooch from injury and added a couple of jets to their line up, Bonbeach Jets to be exact.
Bairnsdale coach Logan Austin coaxed his former St Kilda teammate, 208 AFL game veteran, Sam Gilbert, to join the Redlegs for the day, Gilbert bringing along his Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League teammate at Bonbeach, Shane McDonald, a man many people might never have heard of. It was a name on everyone’s lips by 5pm, the seven time club and dual league best and fairest putting on a clinic in the midfield.
It was no wonder Austin, who last Thursday signed on to coach Bairnsdale in season 2023, was smiling pre-game. He finally had the two big bodied midfielders he had yearned for all season. Too often in 2021 the Redlegs have been blown away in the second halves of games by sides with the experienced tradesmen in the middle leading the way.
The Redlegs went in with an air of confidence about them.

IMAGE: Bairnsdale senior coach, Logan Austin, has signed on for a second season in charge of the Redlegs.