'Quite a reduced role': New Blues coach to meet with Raiders

The Raiders will meet with Maguire on Monday to finalise whether their assistant coach will take on a consultancy role with the NRL club or part ways with them completely.

He was officially announced as the Blues State of Origin coach on Thursday having been assumed as Brad Fittler's replacement for weeks.

Maguire has signed a "multi-year" deal, having last week been forced to step down as Kiwis coach - despite leading them to an historic 30-0 thrashing of Australia in the final of the Pacific Championships just weeks earlier.

His Blues assistants will be John Cartwright, Matt King and former Raiders assistant Brett White, who now works for the Gold Coast.

Melbourne Storm football manager Frank Ponissi will be the Blues team performance manager.

Maguire, who takes over after Fittler coached the Blues for the past six years, hinted he was likely going to take on the reduced role with the Green Machine.

He'd initially hoped to perform all three roles only for the Raiders board to kibosh his chances of remaining as a full-time assistant coach - due to the importance of 2024 in the team's development.

The board felt the Origin period took up too big a chunk of the NRL campaign to allow Maguire to give both roles justice.

Maguire was then sensationally dropped by the NZRL, despite the Origin and Test periods not overlapping.

"That's going to be quite a reduced sort of role," he said when asked about his Raiders job.

"I'll just be talking to Ricky now. My main focus will be about the Blues now."

Maguire will also lean on Stuart about his new job with the Blues - given Stuart had two tenures in charge of NSW, firstly in 2005 and then in 2011-12.

He'll also reach out to another former Raiders teammate in Laurie Daley and "Freddy" Fittler.

Maguire admitted he was disappointed to no longer have the Kiwis head coaching role - because he felt he could do both - but respected the NZRL decision, pointing to the need for unity to have success at the elite level.

"I'm fortunate that I can talk to past coaches like Ricky, Laurie and I'll connect with 'Freddy' at some stage," Maguire said.

"We all want to have the state succeed and I know they do and I do just as much.

"Really looking forward to what's ahead and I actually can't wait."

The pressure to reclaim the Origin mantle will be on Maguire from the start, given they've lost the past two series to Queensland since Billy Slater took over as Maroons coach.

NSW went into both those campaigns as favourites, only to be undone each time by the Queenslanders.

NSWRL chief executive David Trodden didn't elaborate on the actual length of Maguire's contract, but hoped his time in charge would eventually be similar to Fittler's.

"Maguire has agreed to a multi-year appointment as the head coach of the NSW Blues, starting from 2024," Trodden said.

"In recent years we have been blessed with the stability of long-term coaching tenures with Brad Fittler, Laurie Daley and Ricky Stuart and we are looking forward to this engagement following the same pattern.

"We all have expectations of immediate success in 2024 together with the opportunity to build a structure that will provide for sustained long-term success."

Maguire said every position in the Blues' line-up would now be up for grabs as he starts his reign.

"I'm big on form," he said.

"The biggest thing I'll say to all the players is just to go out and play the best footy that you can play because that'll play a big part in where we go as a group.

"When you've got people in really good form and they're coming into camp with a positive mindset about how they want to do things, I go after those players."