England fans in Twickenham and Richmond missed Defoe's winner yesterday after a powercut hit thousands of homes and pubs in the area.

Power supplies went down at 3.20pm, just two minutes before the Spurs man struck the game's only goal to send England into the second round.

Red-faced bosses at EDF Energy Networks said the electricity was restored to some homes within six minutes and to all customers by 4.38pm, by which time England were clinging on to their slim lead.

A spokesman for the company apologised for the cut, blamed on a fault on the electricity distribution network, which he said affected 'several thousand customers in the Twickenham area'.

"We recognise this incident will have affected viewing of England's World Cup match and our engineers worked as quickly and as safely as possible to restore supplies," he added.

The unfortunately-timed cut will come as a particular blow to those patriotic fans who endured all 90 minutes of last Friday's bore-draw against Algeria with no power failures to relieve them.

The glitch didn't just affect football supporters. It knocked out the water treatment works in Hampton, leaving up to 500,000 homes without water or with reduced pressure.

A spokeswoman for Thames Water said it worked with EDF to restore power by 6.15pm, though it was some time after this before the works were again 'fully operational'.

"The majority of homes had their water supply restored by 8pm, with pressure restored at all homes by midnight," she added.

"We'd like to assure customers we did everything we could to resolve the situation as quickly as we could."