HAT-TRICK hero Ollie Hoskins admitted he was the beneficiary of a 'sensational' effort from the London Irish pack after claiming three of the 12 tries scored in Exiles 72-5 demolition of Yorkshire Carnegie.

Declan Kidney's men turned in their most formidable performance of the season at Madejski Stadium on Saturday, racking up a sixth straight Greene King IPA Championship win at the start of the season.

The forwards were at the heart of the effort, with Hoskins grabbing a treble and replacement hooker Saia Fangia'a also going over at the back of a driving maul, while the hosts also earned a penalty try.

And Australian prop Hoskins – who was making his 50th appearance for the club – said: "Who'd have seen it coming – I don't think I've scored three tries since I was 10 years old.

"It was a total of about two metres, but I'll take it and I just finished off the hard work of the other guys – I just flopped over.

"Our pack was sensational and our back five at scrum time gave us massive weight, which made us look good up front."

He continued: "We just worked hard at maul time and didn't try and fix something which wasn't broken, we just kept going to it and it paid dividends."

Hoskins admitted the performance had come in the face of adversity, adding: "We had a lot of changes during the week, guys went down injured at training and there was a lot of chopping and changing.

"Stephen Myler pulled out on the warm-up so we spoke about finding a way and we did that even with boys playing out of position.

"To put 70 points on anyone, in any league, is a good feat."

He also paid tribute to the Irish fans, stating: "The crowd obviously remembered the last time we played Yorkshire at home (the 55-48 play-off final victory in 2017) and brought massive energy which really got us through, especially me going 80 minutes – I haven't played 80 for a long time."

Despite his heroics, Hoskins was pipped to the man-of-the-match award by wing Topsy Ojo, making a club-record 290th appearance.

However, Ojo joked: "Someone was being very generous. I think Ollie was too busy looking at the sideline thinking 'I'm a prop I shouldn't be playing 80 minutes', but he was brilliant.

"I'll share some of my award with him."