On Thursday, the club confirmed that McGregor will be rewarded for the dramatic turnaround he’s orchestrated at the club this year with a two-year contract extension.

It comes little more than a week after the passing of his mother Jean, a woman who was his greatest supporter and remains his inspiration.

“She’d be looking down and she’d be proud,” McGregor said when asked about what’s been a tough time for his family since Jean suffered a stroke in February. 

“She was a huge supporter of myself as a player and obviously going into coaching. She was very proud of what I achieved in the game and what I’m achieving as a coach.

“I think I saw mum cry about half a dozen times in her life so she was always the strong, resilient, tough one in the family. She’s been through it all and she’d be looking down now and saying ‘I made you resilient’ in some way.”

That resilience is something McGregor leaned on heavily in a tough 2016 season that saw poor results on the paddock and calls for his head off it. 

Coming into 2017 he was top of most ‘first coach sacked’ markets leading a team strongly tipped to finish with the wooden spoon.

Instead, the Dragons sit third on the ladder and are odds-on for a top four finish thanks, in no small part, to Jean’s advice.

“She always talked about belief in yourself and certainly not listening to any external pressure, and to just concentrate on what you need to do,” McGregor said.

“There was a lot about continuous learning to with mum. It’s something you don’t think a lot about because you get told it consistently but, when someone’s not there anymore, you look back and see that was pretty good advice that’ll stay with me forever.”

It was a self-belief that never wavered, even throughout a tumultuous 2016 and, what some considered, a prolonged wait until the club confirmed his future this week. 

It’s enough to make any coach second-guess themselves, but McGregor was unequivocal when asked if he ever had cause to doubt himself.

“No not at all,” McGregor said.

“[After 2016] you certainly have a real good look at where we went wrong and have open discussions about where you need to go. 

“Once you have all that, it’s time to have a really good look at if you want to change.

“I coached in the bush [with Wests Illawarra] for three years and won three comps. I went to NSW Cup with Illawarra in it’s first year of existence and we made the finals. In my first year as [Dragons] coach we played finals footy so the first time I really faced failure as a coach was 2016.

“When you face it, you’ve got to understand that you need to make some change. If you don’t make change you’ll probably fail again.

“Success if failure turned inside out and what I needed to do was really look at that and find a way to change my ways to suit the playing group we’ve got now.

“That’s what we’ve done. We’ve found a style of play that fits who we are, not what other teams are. That’s learning and growth.”