England hero Ollie Watkins celebrated by former club Weston-Super-Mare

England hero Ollie Watkins' former club, sixth tier side Weston-Super-Mare AFC, have celebrated the striker's origins on social media.

Watkins scored in injury time to book England's place in the final at Euro 2024, beating The Netherlands 2-1 in their semi-final.

Xavi Simons opened the scoring inside the opening ten minutes for the Dutch before England captain Harry Kane netted a controversial penalty ten minutes later.

Watkins came on as a substitute for Kane late in the game and grabbed the headlines to send England into consecutive Euros finals.

The 28-year-old came through the academy ranks at Exeter - he made his first-team debut in their final League Two match of the 2013/14 season before frequently being on the substitutes bench at the start of the following campaign.

To get more playing time, Watkins was sent out on loan in December 2014 to Weston-Super-Mare for the rest of that season - he scored 10 goals in 25 appearances.

Weston-Super-Mare were in the sixth tier of English football and still play in that division (National League South) now.

And after Watkins' heroics, Weston-Super-Mare paid tribute to him with a Tweet that said: "The Ollie Watkins post. Dreams do come true."

Although he only came on for the final few minutes of the Dutch win, Watkins was named player of the match and was on post-match press conference duties.

When asked when playing for Weston-Super-Mare if he ever lost his dreams of playing for England, Watkins said: "I never thought I'd be playing in the Euros for England.

"Obviously you can dream but I'm a realist, I take it day by day and one step at a time - I was just focusing on getting back into the first team at Exeter.

"I've not thought about that but I've put in a lot of hard work to get to this point, it's not just this season it's accumulative and I've worked hard to get to this point and I'm going to enjoy every moment."

HIGHLIGHTS - Netherlands vs England | #EURO2024 | ITV Sportwww.youtube.com

Watkins said he had "manifested" the moment and even told Cole Palmer at half-time he would set him up for the winner.

"Lost for words really; when you score, there are emotions that come through your body but this was a different feeling, it was slow motion when I was running over to the boys and celebrating," Watkins said.

"I didn't want to get off the pitch at the end because I wanted to soak it all in because it doesn't happen often.

"I said to Cole (Palmer) we were both going to go on the pitch and he was going to set me up at half-time and it happened, I manifested it."

In 2017, Watkins signed for Brentford before making his move to Aston Villa in 2020; Watkins scored 19 Premier League goals in the 2023/24 season to help fire Villa to a fourth-placed finish and into the Champions League as it's known now for the first time.

England play Spain in the final of Euro 2024 on July 14 in Berlin.

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.