Friday’s clash in Auckland was shaping as a blockbuster between two undefeated sides before Brisbane shocked the Warriors at home last week.

It’s robbed fans of a mouth-watering showdown between to undefeated sides but McGregor said he never bought into the narrative.

“Everyone was speaking about it but that’s the perspective of the fan more than anything else, not as a coach,” McGregor said.

“Obviously we’re playing a quality side, they’ve got a lot of Internationals, they’ve won five of their first six. They’re pretty well an International spine.

“[Blake] Greeny’s gone over there and really played with a lot of composure and directs the team around. [Shaun] Johnson’s one of the best open footy players you’ll ever see, along with Roger [Tuivasa-Sheck] so we’ve got to limit their opportunities in [good] field position.

“I’m expecting a very physical team, a forward pack that runs hard, they lead the competition in off-loads.

“They’ve been challenged by their coach that they lacked energy last week so it’s definitely a big challenge.”

The Dragons remain the only undefeated team following their 40-20 win over Cronulla last week, with their 6-0 start the longest winning streak of McGregor’s coaching tenure.

They’ll also head into Friday’s match having used the fewest number of players through the opening six rounds of a season since the North Sydney Bears’ 7-0 start to their 1994 campaign.

With almost half his side also in contention for representative call-ups, McGregor said it’s important his side ride the good fortune as deep into the season as possible.

“You want to put a gap on teams when you’re winning,” he said.

“It’s very important to start the year well, it doesn’t matter what anyone says. A healthy roster definitely gives you confidence going into each week. It’s important you take advantage of that.

“People are saying we’re peaking too early or whatever they want to say but, if you’ve got a healthy roster, and you’re winning games of footy, it certainly helps throughout the year when you won’t have a healthy roster and you’ll have people away, possibly, through rep footy.

“People can talk about what we’re doing all they want but we’ve got a vision and we’ve got to have discipline around that and the standards we set.

“We didn’t show the Sharks out best [last week] so we need to show the Warriors our best on Friday night.”