ANDY Dallas is talking about his first half of the season at Solihull Moors. He's explaining how, despite scoring just three goals in the National League before January, not much was different about his mentality or his approach to games. There was one crucial difference, however. There was the small matter of a badly damaged rib which was causing him plenty of grief.

“I was struggling to sleep at night because with your rib, you cough or you sneeze and you are back to square one and it's brutal,” recalls Dallas. “I'm pretty sure I broke my rib, it was definitely cracked. I was playing through that because I was desperate to play and I felt like the boys were looking at me to get the goals. I'm not saying I felt under pressure to play but I put pressure on myself to be playing and scoring. I never want to make excuses [but] looking back maybe I wasn't 100 per cent.”

The injury has long since healed and the transformation has been incredible since Christmas gave way to New Year. Suddenly Dallas, 22, started smashing goals in left, right and centre. A conversation over the festive period with his father, Peter, perhaps planted a seed.

“My dad was actually saying at New Year that I normally come on to a game in the second half of the season because I look after myself and I'm professional – and sometimes it just takes a bit of time to gel into a new team.”

That has certainly been the case for Dallas at Solihull, the relatively youthful Midlands club which was formed in 2007 following a merger between Solihull Borough and Moor Green, whom he joined from Cambridge United last summer. Since the turn of the year, and free from the rib injury, the former Rangers youngster has demonstrated the kind of razor-sharp form that once took him to the fringes of Steven Gerrard's first team at Ibrox. By January 16, he had scored three times but a hat trick against Southport in the FA Trophy doubled his tally and a week later in the league he destroyed Dover Athletic singlehandedly with all five goals in a 5-0 win. In total, he has scored 19 in the campaign and 13 of them have come in his last 14 games as Solihull have kept up the pressure in the race for promotion to League 2.

The Solihull management team of Neal Ardley and James Quinn had been impressed by Dallas's performances during a loan spell at Weymouth the previous season.

“I knew quite little about them to be honest, it was a conversation I'd had with the manager [Ardley] and he was really positive. I can honestly say that the facilities are better than Cambridge. The standard of the gym, the sports science department, they do breakfast in the morning compared to Cambridge where it was just a case of turning up. I was just at a stage of my career – you're obviously not promised game time – but they just said they were putting a lot of faith and trust in me and that gave me a lot of confidence that I was going to help the club and they were going to help me. It was a good proposition for both parties.”

For Dallas, taking a step down from League 2 has worked, and now it is a case of trying to return to the place where he came from.

“The teams pushing for promotion in our league would be comfortable in League 2. If you look at the teams promoted from our league they always seem to do well, the likes of Sutton, they are quite close to the play-offs. We had Wigan in the FA Cup, and at the time that was the hardest draw we could have got – they were top of League 1 – and we gave them a good game away from home, we ended up getting a replay, we went 1-0 up and unfortunately we got beaten in extra-time. There's not too much between the levels.”

Dallas has taken regular soundings from Quinn – a former Northern Ireland international striker – and Ardley, who played almost 200 games for Wimbledon in England's top flight, while one of his team-mates at Damson Park is Adam Rooney, sixth on the SPFL Premiership all-time scorers lost.

It's not a bad trio to canvass for advice, even if Ardley and Quinn are forever wanting him to push himself further.

“As much as they are happy with me, they are always demanding more and I think it is because they see the potential in me. It is a demanding league but the opportunity to come in and work with Neal Ardley [was great]. Quinny, as well, I'm quite close to him and the knowledge that he has been able to pass on along with the likes of Adam Rooney [has helped]. Roons is at the other side of his career but Quinny has said to me 'watch his movement because there are things that he can do that you can't and vice versa'. If you can take a leaf out of his book you will be going in the right direction.”

That direction appears to be up with Solihull riding high in the National League. They occupy fourth place in the division which would be good enough for a quarter-final play-off berth in the convoluted promotion system that is used in England's fifth tier. Dallas, though, is trying not to look too far into the future and he remains grounded when asked about what happens next.

“I don't want to think about it too much. It is easy when you are scoring a few goals to think I want to do this and that but I do take it game by game. I know I can score goals in this league. Obviously I have got dreams and aspirations for myself and the club understands that I want to play at the highest level possible. It's a dream of mine to play for Scotland, and I think back to sitting on the bench [at Rangers] and how close I got, regardless if I was ready or not, I was deservedly there and it makes me hungry to get back to that level. I've moved away from home, I train every day, I eat well, I try to do everything that I can so that I am right for the weekend. I don't want that to be wasted [effort].”