Gardiner then made his debut for the Carlton Football Club in round 3 of the 1907 season.

In his second season, 1908, Gardiner was part of Carlton's premiership winning team.

[2] Early in 1918 Gardiner joined the hundreds of thousands of other Australians who had enlisted to serve in World War I.

While training at Broadmeadows Army camp, his instructors described him as "steady and reliable," "capable and attentive" and "keen and hard-working", but the war ended before Gardiner was called up for active duty.

This Australian rules football biography of a person born in 1885 is a stub.