BLACKBURN defender Lucas Neill has admitted he will be as excited as any Rovers fan when the draw for the first round of the UEFA Cup is made next month.

Graeme Souness's Worthington Cup winners will proudly take their place alongside some of the biggest teams in Europe for the draw in Monaco on August 30.

And, like many of the fans who are ready to follow their heroes' adventures abroad, Neill is already dreaming of a plum tie against one of the big guns from Italy's Serie A or Spain's La Liga when the action hots up in the latter stages of the competition.

"The prospect of Europe is a whole new experience for me and I can't wait to get a taste of it," said Neill, who joined Rovers last season in a cut-price £600,000 move from Millwall.

"I'd love to play against one of the big Italian or Spanish sides because those are the games you dream about as a kid.

"But, to be quite honest, I'm not too bothered about who we play just as long as we win.

"We want to get to the final but, realistically, we just want to do ourselves justice so the further we can get, the better it will be because it's a great experience to be able to play in big games like that."

It's four years since Rovers last competed in the UEFA Cup under Roy Hodgson and their recent forays into Europe have not exactly been successful.

But, nevertheless, there is still a strong chance of them being one of the seeded teams when the first round draw is made, which would see them avoid some of the stronger sides until the later stages of the competition.

With that in mind, therefore, who would Neill want as a first round opponent in what would be a two-legged affair in the second half of September?

"It's hard to say who I'd like in the first round because I don't know much about some of the teams who are in it," said Neill.

"Ideally, I suppose I'd like to get a third world team - in a football sense - because, in theory at least, it should be easier to progress against some of the weaker teams.

"If we want to progress then we've got to look to win our home games comfortably and then go away knowing we don't have to attack too much.

"But it would then be nice to get into the bigger teams in the latter stages so hopefully we can have a little bit of a UEFA Cup run because that would be great for the club and great for the fans."

For someone like Neill, however, simply playing in Europe at all is the stuff dreams are made of, especially when you consider he was playing Second Division football barely a year ago.