Triple Richmond premiership star midfielder Dion Prestia hadn’t kicked a goal in his six games this season leading into yesterday’s Round 8 match against West Coast at the MCG.

That all changed in a hurry, however, during the third quarter of the contest.

In a brilliant five-minute burst, Prestia achieved one of the game’s unique hat-tricks – three consecutive goals.

Prestia, who returned to the Tigers’ line-up after being rested the previous week due to general soreness, was one of the team’s best, finishing the match with 23 disposals, four marks, four inside-50s, an equal team-high three goals, equal game-high 13 score involvements and 414 metres gained.

Those three goals were an equal AFL career-high for Prestia, who is scheduled to reach League football’s 200-game milestone in Friday night’s clash with Geelong at the MCG.

The previous time he kicked three goals in an AFL match was in Round 18, 2018 against St Kilda at Marvel Stadium.

Richmond coach Damien Hardwick praised Prestia during his post-match press conference.

“I thought he was pretty important today,” Hardwick said.

“The ability for him to hit the scoreboard, when it mattered, broke the game open from there.

“He’s a really important player to us, as we know . . . It’s good to see his season start to get up and going . . . working in unison with Hopper, Taranto, Shai and Dustin and Jayden Short, which was important.

“It’s probably the first time since the early rounds that we’ve had all those guys in the side at the same time.

“So, hopefully they can get some momentum from that and get a little bit better.”