GRAHAM Alexander has experienced many highs in an 18-year career to date, but there are still two big ambitions he is desperate to achieve.

One is playing in the Premier League, but the other could be crossed off his to-do list as early as tonight.

Alexander’s football education began on the terraces of Highfield Road, where he was a season ticket holder as a child.

But despite several meetings with Coventry City, both at their original ground and new state-of-the-art Ricoh Arena, he has never scored on his hometown territory.

“I’ve scored against them for Preston, but they were all at home, and I want to score down there,” said the Coventry-born defender-cum-holding midfielder, who is set to make his 700th league start tonight.

He remembers the first distinctly.

“It was back in 1991 for Scunthorpe at Gillingham on the first day of the season, we got thumped 4-0 and I got booked, so it’s gone a little bit better since then!” he smiled.

Although he never played for the club he supported, he still credits the Sky Blues with launching his career.

“Coventry were a top-flight team when I was younger and I wasn’t deemed good enough for that standard, which is fair enough, because I probably wasn’t at that time.

“The head of youth at Coventry sent me for a trial at Scunthorpe and thought I could do something at a lower level, and I was taken on there.

“I was a Coventry supporter all my childhood, but I was buzzing to be signed on by anybody to be honest.

“I used to go and watch Coventry with my dad, from being seven or eight, and the FA Cup Final (in 1987) was the culmination of a lot of hard years supporting them.

“That was a fantastic year, and it was probably my last year supporting them properly because the year after was my last at school and my football took hold.”

Back then, he could perhaps never imagined where his career would take him or how long it would last.

Hard work and luck, he says, have been the key components to his longevity.

“There’s no secret, I’ve been quite lucky with injuries, and I just try and work hard every day in training and not give anyone an excuse to leave me out,” said Alexanders.

“It’s not always worked that way, but I’ve given it my best shot.

“The worst injury I had was when I punctured my lung and broke a rib five or six years ago, and was out for eight weeks, but apart from that, I’ve been relatively lucky, touch wood.”

And he hopes his latest milestone is just one on a list of many more yet to come.

“I’m not targeting anything other than the next game, hopefully play in that, and target the next one,” he said.

“You can’t do that in this game; you can’t target how long you will play on for.

“I’m not even targeting 40, I want to carry on after that – I don’t want to stop!

“So, hopefully, I’ll get my wish and play for as long as I possibly can.

“No-one knows when that will be.”