HOW Jordan Rhodes can be constantly overlooked for his national team is beyond me.

It would seem he is another victim of the Ewood Park curse.

For many a year now, signing for Blackburn Rovers has been the death knell for any international aspirations a player might have.

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It is often more prevalent among English players, but it seems Rhodes’s Scotland career has been temporarily put on hold.

And in a squad counting on Stevens Fletcher and Naismith for goals, you have to wonder why the man who scored more times in English football than anyone else in 2013 isn’t good enough for a side ranked 29th in the world by FIFA.

But he isn’t the first to suffer from the curse and he probably won’t be the last.

The most high profile player shunned by the Three Lions during his Ewood Park career was Chris Sutton.

Despite being one of the Premier League’s top scorers in 1997/98 and part of a side that for three quarters of the season was genuinely challenging for the title he was only offered the chance to play for England’s B side.

His decision to turn it down was questionable, but it did seem hugely unjust that a player of his talent and at that time in the form of his life was not picked by Glenn Hoddle.

And you do have to ask yourself, had he been playing for Manchester United, or even more ‘glamorous’ clubs like Newcastle, who were up there at the time, Liverpool and Chelsea, who he later signed for, would he have gotten a chance while in the same form? I reckon so.

Other players to have been overlooked included Ripley and Wilcox, as much an influence on Rovers’ title-winning season as Shearer, and later Matt Jansen and David Dunn.

Gordon Strachan says Jordan Rhodes can’t play on his own and that is why he doesn’t pick him.

He says he has to put the team over and above the individual.

I say any man who scores 50-plus goals in 100 games for a side in the Championship deserves to play for his country.