Canadian striker Iain Hume had an unforgettable outing in the 2015 Hero Indian Super League on Sunday evening as he became the third player to score a hat-trick this season, fourth overall. Thanks to his first-ever professional hat-trick, Atlético de Kolkata returned to winning ways after three consecutive losses as they beat hosts Mumbai City FC 4-1 at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. 32-year-old Hume, who also scored five goals for Kerala Blasters FC last season, spoke to indiansuperleague.com after the match and discussed a variety of subjects at length. Here are the excerpts from the interview. Iain, great result today. Was it important to get three points after three losses?We disappointed ourselves by not scoring goals in the last three games. Not particularly performance-wise though, since we’ve played alright. We just couldn’t get the goals to get the points. I think today we’ve got four goals, and they [Mumbai] could’ve added a couple of goals as well. But Amrinder [Singh] made some great saves. We could have scored more than four as well. It was a great counterattacking performance from us today. The coach’s plans have been used really well tonight. And that too against a team which has been playing very well. We’ve stuck to the game plan and things have gone in our favour. We deserved those three points, but we can’t simply rest on that. We’ve got a big game in six days against NorthEast United FC now and after losing 1-0 against them a few days ago, it’s a big one for us.You scored your first hat-trick today. How does it feel?It’s my first-ever professional hat-trick. I’ve scored hat-tricks in reserve games and pre-season games, and have waited over 500 games to score a hat-trick. So it means an awful lot to me. You could see that with my celebration! It’s a brilliant feeling but that’s only an added bonus. Three points is the main thing, and I think everyone will tell you that. We’ve got that and we’ve worked hard to put everything into practice. We’re over the moon, but we’ve got to start working on the NorthEast game once we get back to Kolkata."We’re confident in our abilities and we have to put it into our matches."Iain HumeConsidering that Mumbai had their tail up after pulling one back, how important was the third goal by Augustin Fernandes?It was massively important. The home team will score a goal – that is always going to happen with the home team. There’s a chance, they’ll always get their tails up a bit, getting a bit of confidence. We knew it was going to be tough, with [Sunil] Chhetri, [Sony] Norde, [Nicolas] Anelka and [Frederic] Piquionne playing so well. But we defended very well. Ofentse Nato, Amrinder, Tiri – I could just name everybody! I think everything went to plan.Seven games already in the league stage, seven more to go. Confident of a semi-final berth?We’re looking at NorthEast and that’s what we are worried about right now. Obviously, the plan is to get into the semis. We’re confident in our abilities and we have to put it into our matches.Excited about going back to Kolkata?We’ve only played two games at home – won one, lost one. We should have had six points after the last game. So we owe ourselves and the fans one after the last game. So we’re looking forward to the NorthEast game.
