RUNNING, running and more running has been the limit of the exercise for East Lothian’s footballers in the last month.

East of Scotland football – like sport across the country – ground to a halt last month due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Team-mates have not seen each other face-to-face for weeks and footballers have been clocking up the miles on the roads and footpaths while growing unfamiliar with a football.

Matti King, record goalscorer at Musselburgh Athletic, is among those hoping for a swift resolution but equally keen to stress that football is rightly not the most important thing just now.

He said: “Nobody knows what is happening and, obviously, with football, it is going to go on the backburner; people are losing their lives.

“We are as in the dark as anybody else and it is going to hit hard.

“We are in the football world and it is the same with everything.

“We don’t know if it is going to be the end of May, the beginning of June, the beginning of July before football restarts; we don’t know.”

In the meantime, King, of Wallyford, is simply keeping himself ticking over by running in a bid to keep his fitness levels up.

For Ben Miller, it had already been a season to forget before the global pandemic.

The Tranent midfielder has played fewer than a dozen games after suffering damaged tendons in his ankle during a glamour friendly with Hibernian back in August.

Now, he is simply clocking up the miles in a bid to stay fit.

He said: “I have just been going on three-mile runs, five-mile runs, five-kilometre runs – a lot of running. We’ve got an app for the Tranent team where we just clock our runs in it.

“You don’t know when the season will be called back – they might just void the league and start again next season.

“I have just been doing runs and the wee challenges you see online with guys like Kevin Thomson.”

Tranent’s last game was against Hill of Beath Hawthorn on March 7, with the Fife side running out 5-1 winners.

The Belters were due to face them again seven days later but the national lockdown saw the game – and every fixture since – postponed.

There is no suggestion when football could resume and 25-year-old Miller said players would need a little bit of time to get up to full sharpness before returning to competitive games.

Miller, who is representing his hometown team, said: “I would not say we need a pre-season but I would personally say a couple of weeks.

“I don’t think Tranent are the only team doing runs but players have not got footballs in the house.

“You would still need to get up to speed with possession, shooting, touches.”

Steven Tait, captain of Dunbar United, said players were continuing to run to keep fit, with the Dunbar-born footballer also joining in with fitness guru Joe Wicks’ workouts online, but it was not the same as match fitness.

The 33-year-old said: “It does feel longer than a month, definitely.

“It is mad to think everything was normal about a month ago but when you are isolated so much it feels longer.

“We try to get out and we are still allowed to go out and go for a run but it is not the same.

“When games are off, you are usually still training Tuesday and Thursday – two nights a week – and sometimes on a Saturday you are in as well.

“It is all very alien to anything we have had before.”