It follows News Corp reports on Tuesday claiming Widdop - currently with Super League Club Warrington - has reached out to the Dragons about a possible return, one that could only be achieved via a swap for Norman.

It comes just one year after the former Dragons skipper shocked the club with a request to be released to take a four-year deal in the UK.

READ MORE: Lomax tipped to shine against Roosters as Norman dropped

Widdop's circumstances have reportedly changed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting him to seek a return to Australia.

The Dragons have first rights on the deal as a condition of the previous release, but would need to offload Norman, who was this week dropped from McGregor's 17 for Thursday's clash with the Roosters.

Addressing the media on Wednesday, McGregor said he was unaware of any move to bring Widdop back to Wollongong, saying the discussion was disrespectful to Norman, who played his 200^th NRL game last week.

"That's really unfair to Corey," McGregor said when asked about the mooted swap.

"It's the first time he hasn't been picked in 18 months with the club, and we're talking about Gareth coming back already. That's too unfair at this raw stage to even talk about, and it hasn't been mentioned to me with the recruitment [staff] either.

"I have not been told anything around that and it's just so unfair to the player involved that's here. We want Corey to play well this year."

McGregor said that remains the goal despite making the call to axe the 29-year-old in favour of the returning Adam Clune in the halves.

It comes in the wake of fierce criticism of Norman's performances for the bulk of the season, with McGregor saying it wasn't a decision taken lightly.

"You don't make selection changes on a [single] week," McGregor said.

"Corey and Adam, there preference is to play on the left side of the field and we thought the function of the team would improve if we made the tough decision [to drop Norman]. Corey's been below his best and we want to give him time to work on his game, look at what he wants out of the game and what we need to improve.

"It's a little bit around last week and [needing] healthier game management when key people are off the field and obviously [having] more skin the game in his creativity. He's a very good player, we just need a little bit more out of him."

Clune's return will see Ben Hunt shift to the No. 6 jumper for the second time this season, with Tristan Sailor again named on the bench.

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McGregor said Hunt will make an in-game shift to dummy-half with Sailor likely to be injected in the halves far earlier than he was against the Rabbitohs last week.

"Tristan's only played 20 minutes in 2020 so it's very hard for him to go out and expect him to be in control of his game at a young stage of his career," McGregor said.

"We thought the right thing to do this week was to give him more time, but not expect him to play 80 minutes just yet. I thought his 20 minutes last week, outside [an intercept], was good, he was busy, he was active, defensively he was strong, he set up a try for us.

"To be totally honest we probably mismanaged our rotation of our impact players last week. There were a lot of stoppages in the game, Tristan didn't come on til late. Looking back we could've done things differently and that is getting Tristan on the field earlier for sure."