Rickie Lambert was only a Southampton player until yesterday.

He would become so much more than that by the time he made his way out of St George's Park and back to England's team hotel: a bona fide member of Roy Hodgson's senior squad, keen figure of intrigue and the former employee of a company which puts beetroot into jars. He will likely become an internationalist tomorrow, but he is a story-teller, too, and held the attention in Staffordshire as he read out a few passages from a career which has just introduced another plot twist.

It has turned him towards Wembley and a potential debut against Scotland tomorrow evening. The fixture was at first resurrected as part of the FA's 150th anniversary celebrations but it will also mark a significant date for Lambert since it is 13 years since he was released by Blackpool following an uncomfortable apprenticeship and left to train quietly with local Football League club Macclesfield Town. The cost of travel could only be met by taking a job attaching the lids on to jars of beetroot at a factory near his home.

The 31-year-old loosened off after his first day's training yesterday by telling that anecdote, a colourful tale which he had not been invited to divulge last season despite scoring 15 goals in his inaugural season in the Barclays Premier League with Southampton. The attention then had been on how his club would fare in the top flight - they finished the campaign in the relative comfort of 14th place, albeit with a new manager - but his first call up to an England squad has offered a chance to look beyond such black and white statistics.

Numbers are an important part of a striker's trade, of course - Lambert was moved to St Mary's after prolific spells at both Rochdale and Bristol Rovers - but getting the chance to realise the ambition to play for his country has more pertinently been down to his incorrigible sense of belief. "Never, even in the bad moments, was I ever going to give up," said the Southampton striker.

"When I was let go by Blackpool, I didn't think my time had passed but I was a million miles away [from international football]. I couldn't get a club anywhere, I was training at Macclesfield without a contract and I didn't have any money so I had to had to earn some by [working in] a factory. It was a beetroot factory. I don't even like beetroot. I was just putting the lids on the jars. That was basically it. The main reason I came back was because I never gave up."

The closest the forward now comes to the vegetable is when he turned a similar shade when asked how it felt to join up with his national team for the first time yesterday. "I have tried to play it cool and act like I am in control, but inside I am really excited," said Lambert.

The act of making a new addition to an England squad will always give cause for that player to be compared to his contemporaries, and Lambert's burly physique and modest career has already been measured against the likes of Jermain Defoe, Danny Welbeck and Wayne Rooney. The latter was in a far more glamorous milieu than Lambert 13 years ago, having already ascended through the youth teams at Everton to reach the fringes of the Goodison club's under-19 squad, despite still being in his early teens.

He has since spent the past 13 weeks in a huff and there has been enduring speculation the forward will leave Manchester United this summer. His relationship with David Moyes, who brought him through at Everton and is now manager at Old Trafford, is considered to be fractured, while the Scot has also intimated that Rooney is not fit enough to play at Wembley.

Hodgson, though, has seemed to shrug off concerns about his player's shoulder injury ahead of the visit of Scotland. "Wayne looked good, which was just what I expected really," said the England manager. "There is no doubt in my mind, from that session, that he is not suffering any physical injury."