With current halfback Benji Marshall off-contract at season’s end, the Dragons have been heavily linked to the Melbourne superstar who is reportedly seeking a release from the final year of his deal with the Storm to shift to Sydney next year.

Marshall admitted this week that he is only a ‘‘50-50 chance’’ of remaining in Wollongong next season but McGregor sought to put the Cronk rumours to bed ahead of Saturday’s Charity Shield clash with South Sydney. 

‘‘To put a few rumours to rest, Cooper Cronk hasn’t been spoken to by anyone at the club,” McGregor said.

‘‘So that’s that put to sleep. He’s not coming here.

‘‘It’s been a shame this week because all we’ve spoken about is players off-contract.

‘‘A ball’s not even been kicked in 2016 and we’re already talking about 2017.’’

Marshall is one of four big names at the club who remain un-signed beyond this year with Ben Creagh, Joel Thompson and Mitch Rein all coming off contract.

McGregor admitted the club does not have a huge amount of wiggle room in it’s salary cap but maintained all four players remain in his plans for 2017.

‘‘Going into 2017 we’ve got 21 players out of 25 under contract [for 2017], and three of our second tier out of six,” McGregor said.

‘‘The only players off contract at the moment are Benji, Joel Thompson, Benny Creagh, and obviously Mitch Rein, who’s our local junior. 

“That will all work itself out over the first half of the season

“It’s difficult at the moment to offer those guys large contracts when you’ve got 21 players on your books and 17 of them have got increases over the last 12 months due to their form or their contract length.

‘‘We don’t have the same stretch as other clubs do at the moment so we’ve got to do it through hard work and being really educated with our process in our salary cap.

‘‘We’ll work through it and those four players are very high in my plans going forward. A lot will be determined by the first eight weeks of the competition.”