After scoring more than 100 goals in the top flight of English and European football you would expect that a striker would earn his fair share of international caps.

Remarkably Trevor Whymark won just a solitary senior England cap for a 20-minute substitute appearance against Luxembourg in a 1977 World Cup qualifier.

It has been a mystery to his former Ipswich Town team-mates and supporters for years why this potent frontman, who was blessed with such aerial prowess, never added more.

But 30 years after that cameo appearance in a 2-0 win, which was ultimately not enough for England to qualify for Argentina 1978, a 57-year-old Whymark sits at his kitchen table in Alburgh, still looking athletic and lean enough to win a place in the current team, without an ounce of bitterness or regret.

His only explanation is that it was a different age, pre-Premier League foreign invasion, when the competition among English strikers was fierce.

Whymark said: "If you're an English striker in the Premier League now, you have a very good chance of being in the England squad. In those days I was up against players like team-mate Paul Mariner, ex-team-mate Dave Johnson, Trevor Francis, Kevin Keegan, Malcolm McDonald, Mick Channon and Bob Latchford; nearly every team had all English or Scottish players. You were probably battling against a dozen players. I'm just happy I have one cap. There are some great players who didn't even get 20 minutes."

But wearing the three lions on his chest and terrorising defences in the air seemed a world away just a decade before when, a small for his age, Whymark played on the wing as a teenager for village side Wortham and then Diss Town. He was spotted playing for Norfolk U18s by an Ipswich Town scout and soon started making a name for himself in the Blues youth team, or so he thought.

One night at the Saracen's Head in Diss, a curious drinker questioned why Whymark's name never appeared in match reports in the Saturday night football paper. Unbeknown to the Burston striker he was too old to play in the youth team but had been registered by the youth team manager regardless under the alias of Trevor Walsh.

Shortly afterwards a young Bobby Robson started his historic reign at Portman Road and noticing the discrepancy, offered Whymark a month's trial to win a professional contract. Eventually after three months on trial, Whymark signed his first professional contract, the day after his 19th birthday, on £30 a week basic, a big jump from the £6 a week he was earning in his office job at a Diss builders' merchant.

He made his debut in February 1970 away to Manchester City and played a handful of games in that and the next two seasons, as Robson's reign at Portman Road got off to a slow start.

But in the first day of the 1972/73 season, Whymark scored the opener in a 2-1 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford, who included the legendary trio of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law in their line-up.