As well as being a good coach, Ernie Merrick is also a sensible dresser.
Take a look at this smart outfit the Newcastle Jets coach wore in the match against Western Sydney Wanderers in December.
Note the short sleeves, people.
Ernie’s judicious fashion choices were on display again on Saturday when the Jets beat Sydney FC 2-1 in 27 degrees and 85 per cent humidity.
Ernie was in short sleeves, while Sydney coach Graham Arnold wore a suit and tie.
What Topics can’t understand is why A-League coaches feel the need to wear suits during matches in the middle of summer.
Come to think of it, why do football coaches feel the need to wear suits to matches at all.
Brisbane coach John Aloisi is one of those strange sideline suit-wearers.
Topics has seen him wearing a suit during matches in extreme heat. He doesn’t even take his jacket off!
We’ve even seen Aloisi wear a suit while getting soaked in pouring rain on the sideline.
Of course, many coaches are too afraid to use an umbrella on the sideline, after former England coach Steve McClaren infamously did so in 2007.
McLaren sheltered under a brolly while sipping a hot cup of tea, as his players toiled against Croatia.
Perhaps he didn’t want to ruin his suit.
British tabloid the Daily Mail ran a picture of the moment, with the headline – A Wally with a brolly.
The newspaper joked last year that McLaren’s career never quite recovered from brolly-gate.
Ernie Merrick might not use a brolly, but we bet he’d wear a waterproof tracksuit in the rain.
That’d be the sensible thing to do.
A Suburb Named Glebe
Topics reported on Thursday about an area known as “the Glebe”.
This followed our reports on Murdering Gully, which is in bush between Glenrock Lagoon and Merewether.
Oscar Westbury told Topics that there “certainly was an area in Newcastle back in the 1920s, maybe ‘30s, known as Glebe”.
“Trams ran to Glebe via Hunter and Union streets, then to Glebe Road where City Road now joins it. City Road did not exist at that time,” Oscar said.
Max Kellett said Glebe was “actually a suburb between Adamstown, Merewether and Hamilton South”.
Max, 82, said the name was changed “somewhere around 1946-47”.
“I used to play in that area around the old Adamstown rifle range during the war,” he said.
“We’d go over the hill, down through Murdering Gully, back down to Burwood Beach and along through the tunnels. There were tunnels along there for the train. We used to walk through the tunnels at high tide so we wouldn’t get wet, and come out at Merewether Baths.
What, no brollies?
