Strathspey Thistle manager Ryan Esson enjoying revisiting familiar faces from football career through Highland League adventures
Ryan Esson has already had several trips down memory lane since taking charge of Strathspey Thistle in the Highland League.
The former Aberdeen and Inverness Caledonian Thistle goalkeeper has come across familiar faces he has not seen in years while travelling to different grounds, even sometimes going up against former teammates in the opposition dugout.
This weekend will be no different, with Esson’s opposite number at Turriff United being one-time Scotland international Warren Cummings.
“I actually played with Warren at Scotland schools, so he’s had a decent career and he knows football. It’s going to be tough,” Esson said.
“I see a lot of faces at matches. There was a guy at Banks O’Dee who knew me when I was at Albion Boys Club, so that’s going back 30 years ago to when I was 14 or 15.
“There are a couple of boys at Inverurie that I knew, and I played with James Duthie at Fraserburgh when we were at Albion too.
“It’s nice to see these guys and have a conversation with them to see where their lives went, and they are obviously in management now as well, so fair play to them.
“Duthers was a big part of my life when we were playing at Albion, so it’s good to see them again.”
While it may seem like the more things change, the more they stay the same in some ways for Esson, he has certainly overseen progress at Seafield Park.
Since he took charge of the Jags, there has been investment both on and off the training pitch to help the team reach their full potential.
A somewhat less hectic fixture schedule will also help him bed his ideas into the team, and he is optimistic that their efforts will start to show more regularly on a matchday.
“When I first came in it was just game after game, and I hardly got any training done with the boys, but now we’ve had a few weeks where we can get them on the pitch and it’s starting to show,” Esson added.
“I spoke to the owner when I first came in, and said there were some things that needed to be done.
“We’ve now got GPS, so the numbers are starting to creep up to what we’re looking to hit.
“We had a real problem after purchasing the Veo Cam. They are excellent.
“I think they are so important but there was a problem with the subscriptions so it took us six weeks before we were able to film a game.
“I managed to rope in the guy that used to do my filming for the under-18s at Inverness, so it wasn’t as though we were totally without footage, but eventually we got there.
“We’re only two and a half months in, but we’re starting to see things falling into place. It has taken a while, and it’s going to take longer, but it’s going in the right direction.”
