Mark Souter believes the future is bright for Inverurie Locos with Richard Hastings at the helm.
The Railwaymen face Fort William at Harlaw Park in the Breedon Highland League with manager Hastings looking for his second win in charge after replacing Andy Low.
Defender Souter has enjoyed working under the new Locos boss so far.
The 27-year-old said: “The new gaffer is brilliant and I think the boys are adapting well.
“He’s different to Andy Low and has a different way of wanting to play so it will take time to get used to that.
“It was a difficult few weeks because Andy left, we had midweek games and then the new gaffer came in so it’s been quite hectic.
“But we’ve had a couple of weeks training with the new manager and things are looking good.
“I like working under him and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the future.
“It’s a long term process, the manager has come in with new ideas and it takes time to put them into place and get the players to adapt to what he’s asking.”
Souter wary of Fort William
Fort William’s last outing was an 8-0 defeat to Brora Rangers, however, Souter is not taking them lightly.
He added: “It’s similar to when we played Keith, they had been beaten 10-0 by Buckie and Fort William were beaten 8-0 in their last game by Brora.
“But you can’t look at past results, they mean nothing. We played Keith and it was 0-0 and that was their first point of the season.
“It was disappointing from our point of view, but Keith fought hard and you could see they were hurting and Fort William will be the same.”
Fort William back in action after Covid issues
The reason the Lochaber outfit have been out of action was firstly due to a Covid-19 outbreak within the squad which led to fixtures against Nairn County and Brechin City being postponed.
Last weekend Fort’s opponents – Buckie Thistle – were playing in the SPFL Trust Trophy.
Assistant manager Paul Coutts said: “Slowly but surely we’re getting back into it, we’ve only had the boys back for training this week.
“We’re maybe not as prepared as we’d like to be, but that can’t be helped and we’ll just have to go with what we’ve got.
“Regardless of our situation we always expect a tough game against Inverurie because we know their qualities.
“We just need to dig in and try to stay in the game as long as we can.
“We’re still learning about the boys and every game is an education for us in terms of seeing how the boys conduct themselves against different opposition.
“It would be unfair to judge the guys on that performance (against Brora), we need to see how we get on against the teams roundabout us.
“Albeit we haven’t met any of those teams. We’ve had a difficult run of games and we’re bottom of the league, but we know we’ve got a favourable run ahead of us.”
Formartine meet Huntly as Clach and Deveronvale clash
Elsewhere, Formartine United host Huntly at North Lodge Park. The Pitmedden outfit are without Darryn Kelly, Ryan Spink and Stuart Anderson.
For the Black and Golds, Colin Charlesworth, Stuart Taylor, Liam MacDonald, Bradley Manson, Angus Grant, Cameron Booth, Glenn Murison and Gavin Elphinstone are injured, while Alex Thoirs is offshore.
Clachnacuddin have a full squad to choose from for Deveronvale’s visit to Grant Street Park.
The Banffers welcome back Matthew Wallace, while Sam Robertson and Dane Ballard could return from hamstring and rib problems, but Robert Scott is still missing.
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