On finishing playing Baird also went on to manage still at Stirling Albion, gaining promotion to the top flight in his first season. But the club would then struggle. It finished fifteenth of eighteen in 1966, when it became the first British and professional team to tour Japan, beating its national team (how times have changed), sixteenth in 1967 and was relegated in 1968. But by then he had been sacked, never turning to management again. He had also been running Baird's Bar in Bo'ness and did so until retirement, at which point he left Scotland altogether, which is where Ireland comes in. He settled in Bangor in Co. Down. Why is unclear but it may have been familial. Bairds are not uncommon in the province. And he appears to have married possibly twice, once in Denny in 1960 and a second time in 1982 to Robertha Gibson cum Wilson in Linlithgow, so Bo'ness, possibly via Northern Ireland. Certainly it is her name that appears on his gravestone in Clandeboye Cemetery, Co. Down following his death just short of his eightieth birthday in 2010. He was survived by child or children, the birth of William Binnie Baird is recorded in Falkirk so Denny in 1961, grand-children and even great-grandchildren.