We will never know, of course, whether former Carterton mayor Joe Walcott is right about his grandson.

He believes young Theo, with his pace, could have scored a couple of goals to see off Portugal in the World Cup quarter final on Saturday had Sven-Goran Eriksson had the bottle to bring him on.

Certainly he couldn't have done any worse than his fellow players who failed to score in two hours of play, then crumbled in the face of a penalty shoot-out.

It was a bold decision by Eriksson to name the untried 17-year-old in his squad in the first place.

Many football fans were baffled by his initial inclusion, but later surprised that he did not feature in any match, since England were so short of strikers and were well below form throughout the tournament.

But no doubt Theo will have benefited from the experience.

It is not every teenager who has the chance to get so close to an appearance in the England team.

He is clearly a player of the future. Once he has some Premiership games under his belt with Arsenal, he is bound to feature in Steve McClaren's new-look England team before long.

We look forward to the day when he will be netting those goals his grandfather confidently predicted he would have scored in Germany.