DOUGIE GAIR, the Edinburgh City captain, insists he is ready to put his Arabian adventure on hold for a crack at League Two.
The 30-year-old is a personal trainer by trade and is planning to upsticks with his partner, Frances, and head to Dubai to pursue a business opportunity in the Middle-East.
However, that scheme could be delayed by City's march towards the SPFL. Gair scored the only goal of the game at Meadowbank as the capital club claimed a 1-0 win over Cove Rangers to progress 4-1 on aggregate.
They will face East Stirlingshire over two legs for a place in league football and Gair, who was considering hanging up his boots, admits the prospect may be too good to turn down after 12 years at the club.
He said: "Dubai is something that’s in the pipeline. I’ve been out there a couple of times and I love it out there. With my work and my partner’s job it’d be ideal to get us out there and it’s something we want to do.
"My missus is a teacher as well so there’s no problem going out there and getting work – and we just fancy doing something different.
“Could I put it off a year? I don’t think I’m in charge of that decision! It’s something that we’re going to do at some point but it might be a heated discussion!
"I’ve been here [at City] for a very long time – and if we go up it would be hard to turn down the chance to play league football."
Gair played a captain's role for City to settle any lingering nerves at Meadowbank after 32 minutes, latching on to a short back-pass by Darryn Kelly and dinking a delightful finish over Cove keeper John McCafferty.
The Highland League champions did restore some pride, with Jamie Watt levelling the score on the day, but City were never in danger of surrendering their advantage.
Gair added: "East Stirling are at the higher level so they will be the favourites - but we like the underdog status. Confidence certainly won’t be an issue for us, we’ve been winning all season. The lads will be raring to go, we’ll have a plan in mind and set up to get the right result.”
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