The Rovers senior players were quick to recognise the talent of Tyrhys Dolan – not least because he’s embarrassed a few of them in training.

Dolan knew first impressions would be key after being handed an opportunity to train with the first-team ahead of the first friendly at Fleetwood Town after his free transfer move.

The teenager was released by neighbours Preston North End but had left a mark on the Rovers recruitment team after his performance in an FA Youth Cup meeting at Ewood months earlier when he was on the scoresheet.

Fast forward a few months and Dolan is the man of the moment at Rovers, scoring his first senior goal in the thrashing of Wycombe Wanderers and already enjoying a meteoric rise onto the first-team stage.

There has been a little luck attached to Dolan’s emergence and were it not for a lack of numbers in training, and an injury to Sam Gallagher, the winger may well have been lining up for the Under-23s rather than first-team as was previously the plan.

But he’s grasped his opportunity with both hands, and the senior players taking to him so much has been a stand-out part of his breakthrough.

“I saw him play against our Under-18s in the Youth Cup, we played Preston in the Youth Cup at Ewood and he played that night,” Mowbray said of his first becoming aware of the teenager.

“When my head of recruitment said to me ‘do you remember the game where we sat and watched the young kid upfront who was fast and dribbling and had good feet? He's getting released from Preston’.

“It was a no-brainer really, for us, and then he came on our training ground and the numbers were really low in pre-season, there's a fair chance that if the numbers hadn't had been so low because of various things, we needed a certain number of players on the training ground and this kid was lighting it up.

"The first team players were saying ‘who the hell is that?!’ He was embarrassing a few of them actually, I remember Joe Rothwell played left-back against him in one game because we were struggling with left-backs and he ripped Joe to bits.

“Then he was training with the Under-23s one day and we had an injury to Gallagher, so he was going off and all the first-team players were winding up Rankin-Costello because the replacement for Gallagher was Dolan, who had tortured him the day before.

“It's a nice story to say that the first-team players recognised this kid as somebody who could torture one of our players, they were teasing, but he's come over with a big smile, he bounces over and he's lightning, dribbles left foot, right foot, works his socks off to get back and play his position.

"The challenge for Tyrhys is to sustain it and keep that as his level forever and improve hopefully, never drop off the intensity, never drop off the work rate, and we're delighted he's part of our structure.”

Rovers made their intention clear in the summer that despite the departures of Danny Graham and Dominic Samuel, and the injury to Bradley Dack, that they wouldn’t be adding to their forward line.

Sam Gallagher didn’t feature in pre-season after limping out of training on the eve of the first friendly at Fleetwood where Dolan got his chance, and set up Adam Armstrong to score with his first touches of the ball.

Since then he’s featured in every match, playing in all four competitive fixtures so far, starting the last two.

Mowbray isn’t usually one to enthuse about young players before they’ve done it on a consistent basis, but couldn’t help getting carried away as he eulogised about Dolan after his performance against Wycombe.

“He's an amazing human being, he's a joy to be around, he's laughing and smiling,” Mowbray added.

“I talk about Bradley Dack being a kid in the playground and he's a kid in a playground, he just wants to play football.

“He's been a breath of fresh air at our club, he plays how I want the team to play, he plays on the front foot, he presses , he works hard, he runs fast, he dribbles, he's got a bit of individual talent as we saw for the penalty, he can move his feet really fast and ask questions of the defenders.

“He's been a real bonus ball for us, to be fair. Without Dack and without Gallagher, we've needed him to do what he has done and we just hope he finds the consistency over a long period.

“We've seen lots of young players who come onto the scene like a shining star but they can fade quite quickly, I'm hoping Tyrhys because of his love of the game will keep pushing on and will help our team win football matches.”

The challenge for Dolan will be when he becomes more of a marked man, and will need to keep his consistency up over a longer period of time to try and cement his place around the first-team set-up.

But the early signs are promising, and as a character, he is excited about the prospect of more game-time, without getting carried away.

A place in the EFL team of the week was reward for his performance, and Mowbray feels Dolan ‘sensed an opportunity’ to break into the side in the early weeks.

He added: “I'm not sure whether he was training with Preston's first-team or not but as soon as he was training with our senior players, he had something to prove and he was electric from day one really.”