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HAD Dylan Tombides' life continued on its intended path, he would be the young player Socceroos fans would be salivating over heading into the 2014 World Cup.
Instead we are mourning his death just a month after his 20th birthday after a 33-month battle with cancer.
Tombides first came to my attention after scoring a double against Arsenal's reserves age 16.
In March 2011, I interviewed West Ham's senior manager Avram Grant and expected him to be coy on Tombides.
We caught up two weeks after Tombides' 17th birthday and Grant intimated the striker would have already made his Premier League debut had the Hammers not been in a relegation scrap.
"It's difficult with the position we are in but he might play before the end of the season, even when we are fighting relegation,'' Grant said.
"He is a player that I like, I took him to the first team, not even from the reserves but from the academy. We haven't taken him just because he's young, but because we can see he has the talent.''
TRIBUTES FLOW IN FOR DYLAN
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Tombides was six months younger than Harry Kewell when he made his Leeds United debut in March, 1996.
So the next question was obvious. Does he have the potential to emulate Kewell?
"Harry was a good player, and I think Dylan has the potential to do it,'' he said.
"I think he can be good for Australia, I am sure about this. He is a different player to Harry, but he has the potential to be like him.
"It's not computers, you need to have a good eye to analyse his potential, then it's our job and his job to maximize his potential.
"To be in a Premier League squad you need to have quality and he has the quality and the potential to play in the Premier League in the future but he needs to prove it.''
I asked whether he might loan him out in the 2011-12 season for experience.
"We are not discussing it at the moment because he is one of the players that we plan to have in the squad for next season,'' Grant said.
West Ham youth coach Tony Carr signed the raw 14-year-old from WA whose family had just relocated to London after a brief stint in Hong Kong.
Carr has produced Paul Ince, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, John Terry, Glen Johnson, Michael Carrick and Joe Cole in his 41 years as head of West Ham's academy so he knows talent when he sees it.
"What impressed me was his calmness in front of goal, he was calm and his finishing was technically always good, he'd make good contact with the ball,'' Carr told me.
"He's a good target player, good in the air, good receiver of the ball in tight positions and a good mover with the ball so he can receive it under pressure and keep possession and has a good eye for goal.
"He's a good striker and a good goalscorer. He's a left footer but his right foot is close to it, he's two footed.
"Yes he's done very well, we like what we see and he's playing and he's scoring goals for the reserves, and that was as a 16 year old against Arsenal.
"So obviously his first season as a full time player he's made some great strides but the important part for a young player is that they keep continuing to improve and don't hit the wall or stop.''
Grant was sacked but Tombides still managed to get on the teamsheet for West Ham's final game of the season in May, before joining the Joeys for the FIFA U17 World Cup in Mexico.
Not only was he the standout player but his positivity was infectious, with roommate Jesse Makarounas recalling the words he'd often repeat to his teenage teammates.
"You can't tell me the sky's the limit when the footprints on the moon. He was often saying that,'' Makarounas said.
It was the end of that tournament when Tombides discovered he had testicular cancer.
He had a passion for golf and often played with father Jim. And long stints in hospital for chemo treatment didn't prevent him making his debut in September 2012 at home to Wigan.
He recovered from a liver operation a year ago which ruled him out of the FIFA U20 World Cup in Turkey last June and set his on West Ham's first-team, while contemplating a loan deal with Andy Carroll, Carlton Cole and Ricardo Vaz Te ahead of him in the queue.
"Physically I'm back up to where I was at the World Cup in 2011, I'm 83 kg (he was 84kg then) and I dropped right down to 68kg at one point," Tombides said in November.
"I knew I'd get through it eventually, but it made me realise how helpless I was. I needed mum, dad, my brother (Taylor), it wasn't pleasant feeling. I could barely keep my eyes, I hardly moved and getting out of bed was a rarity.
"It's been a stop-start, I had to go through my cancer and operations but now it's just the radio frequency ablation (RFA) that put me out for a couple of days.
"But I don't feel like it's holding me back, and I feel I'm ready to play now and I want to look at things as though nothing has changed, I want to push for the first team.
"I not as sharp as I was, but I'm not far off."
Tombides needed a medical clearance from West Ham to play for the Olyroos in Oman in January – his last Australian appearances – it's something he wanted to keep quiet, he just wanted to be regarded like anyone else.
Aware that I had put him up front in a projected Socceroos team for the 2014 World Cup, he too had ambitions of overcoming the odds.
"Wouldn't mind being in the starting XI for the first game,'' he texted.
He followed up by, good naturedly taking exception to some photos we were running of him online.
"They're using pics of me when I looked like Casper the ghost,'' he said.
So Dylan had arranged for four fresh shots of himself to be emailed.
In Oman, he told Olyroos teammate Nick Ansell that he would have another course of chemo when he returned to London and hoped that would be it and teammates said if not for the hair you wouldn't have known he was battling such was his positivity.
Everyone was shocked when it was announced he passed away on Friday morning with his family by his side.
Condolences to Jim, Traceylee and young Taylor.
Dylan, Rest in Peace!
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