Zavon Hines is hoping his midweek hat-trick with the reserves will have fired him firmly into the thoughts of Gianfranco Zola for the weekend trip to Wigan Athletic.
Hines is in great form with his treble in a 6-0 defeat of Birmingham City following on from his league debut as a late substitute against Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday 23 August. In between, the 20-year-old forward struck a fine goal in the Carling Cup second-round defeat of Millwall. He has forged an instant partnership with Frank Nouble and the pair were both among the goals during pre-season as well.
Gianfranco Zola was naturally present in midweek, a fact not lost on the forward who was called up by Jamaica last season for a friendly international. "I want to keep showing the manager what I can do. I have been on the bench for the first team in all our games so far this season and then coming on in some of the games and trying to do my best. That is my aim, to come on and hopefully score goals to help the team."
In total, Hines has two goals from three cameo appearances for the first team including last season and he is confident he has what it takes if given another chance at the DW Stadium on Saturday. He said: "I feel very sharp. I have been doing a lot of one-to-one work and extra work after training and I feel good and just want to be scoring and doing as well as I can. Hopefully I can bring this on and into the first team now as well.
"In past I have not scored as much as I have wanted in the reserves and it is something I have been working on in training. I want to score more and the Birmingham match was something that shows if you work hard enough, it can work.
"It was very good to get a hat-trick and as a striker, when a match has a lot of goals, you want to be the one that is scoring them."
The homegrown Hammer also paid tribute to the experienced heads around him in training and matches. He was particularly grateful to link up with Valon Behrami, with the fit-again midfielder at the heart of the action against Birmingham. "It's brilliant to have Valon back on the pitch and see the new boys, I enjoyed playing with them. They are all good experienced players and it is good for the rest of us, because you can learn a bit of them as well."