David Nugent Photo: VCG

Reaching the national team is the peak for most footballers, especially those whose nations can only dream of winning silverware at international level. England are a prime example.

The elite may dream - mistakenly it would seem - of winning the World Cup while wearing those white shirts with the Three Lions on the chest, but for most players, just gaining a cap would be the cherry on top of the cake.

Well, what goes on top of that cherry? In culinary terms, that's for greater minds but in football terms, the answer is surely to score a goal in your only appearance for your country.   

Perhaps there is nothing closer to the dreams so many of us have in the schoolyard and some people have done it.

There are several of these "one-cap, one-goal players" in England history. Here are some of them.

Steven Caulker - England v Sweden, November 14, 2012

There are not many more cautionary tales than Steven Caulker's football career and it is through no fault of his own. He had come up through the ranks at Tottenham Hotspur and after several loan spells in the lower leagues and Swansea in the Premier League, the defender made a first-choice place at White Hart Lane his own at the beginning of the 2012-13 season.

Not long after he was called up by Roy Hodgson for a game against Italy but he did not make it onto the pitch. He was called up again for a friendly against Sweden in Stockholm to celebrate the opening of the the Friends Arena.

Caulker started the game and nodded in a Steven Gerrard free kick to cap a dream debut, which ended after 74 minutes with England 2-1 up. The Three Lions would lose 4-2, Sweden's Zlatan Ibrahomivic scoring all four for the hosts. At least it went better than fellow debutant Ryan Shawcross, who also never played again but failed to score. Caulker is also the only England international to have made more appearances for Team Great Britain, who he represented at the 2012 Olympics, than his country.

The defender would briefly find fame again as a utility striker for Jurgen Klopp when on loan at Liverpool but is now at Turkish side Alanyaspor. He may also soon become a Scotland international for whom he is also eligbible, as his only England appearance was in a friendly.

David Nugent - England v Andorra, March 2008



The Preston North End striker was thriving in the Championship but had the rare distinction of making his international debut before the step up to the top flight. Steve McLaren, who would go on to become known as "The Wally with the Brolly" after failing to take the Three Lions to Euro 2008, called Nugent up to his squad for the Andorra qualifier after losing Darren Bent to injury.

Nugent was rewarded for answering the call by being thrown on for the last 10 minutes or so of the match, which was being played in Barcelona rather than Andorra, and after nine of those minutes he scored his only goal for his country.

Jermain Defoe might not look back fondly on Nugent's goal. It was his shot that the debutant tapped in from a handful of centimeters out as it was on its way in, thus denying a goal that would have seen Defoe end on 21 rather than 20 England goals ­- which would have taken him level with Steven Gerrard, Kevin Keegan and Mick Channon in the record books.

Everyone else, pub quizmasters included, look back fondly on the goal. Not least Nugent himself, whose own career would only go down from there. How could it not when he scored his England goal before he netted in the English Premier League?

That would come on January 18, 2009, some 18 months after making his top-flight debut for Portsmouth, whom he had joined in a 6 million pound move. It earned a point against Tottenham Hotspur but despite being the first of three goals for the club that was one of the few highlights in his time at Fratton Park.

He was loaned to Burnley, for whom he scored six Premier League goals in 30 games in ­2009-10, a career high. He later played for Leicester City and Middlesbrough in the Premier League but has found his niche in the Championship where he is back with Preston as a 34-year-old. It is unlikely he will lose his record England strike rate of a goal for every 11 minutes of action.

Francis Jeffers - England v Australia, February 12, 2003

The striker had been a bright spot for Everton during dark days at Goodison Park as a teenager in the late 1990s and it earned him a move to Arsenal, where Arsene Wenger described him as a "fox in the box."

It was at his time in Highbury where he earned an England call-up from Sven-­Goran Eriksson ahead of a friendly against Australia at West Ham United's Upton Park on a winter's night in 2003.

The Swede had picked an experimental side for the game and fielded two entirely different teams in each half on the night, which did not help prevent him from seeing a 3-1 win the Socceroos over the Three Lions.

Jeffers was the sole scorer for England that night and his goal made the score 2-1, ably assisted by fellow debutants Wayne Rooney and Jermaine Jenas. While the two providers would go on to play many more times for England, and Rooney would become the nation's top scorer and most capped outfield player, Jeffers' last action of note for the national team would be glancing a header past Mark Schwarzer.

He would go back on loan to Everton from Arsenal before stints at Charlton Athletic, Glasgow Rangers, Blackburn Rovers, Ipswich Town, Sheffield Wednesday, Australia's Newcastle Jets, Motherwell, a return to the Jets, Malta's Floriana and non-league Accrington Stanley.