Damian Zane said he stepped away from the Broadmeadow coaching job because he may not be able to give the players "100 per cent" as he juggled commitments with the Newcastle Jets Youth this year.
Zane, who coached Broadmeadow for two years after steering Edgeworth to four NPL Men's Northern NSW premierships, told Magic players at training on Thursday night he was handing over to assistant John Bennis.
It came after Zane late last year took over the Jets Youth side, who are preparing to compete in the third tier of the NPL in Sydney.
Zane had hoped to continue both roles this season but he made the call to focus solely on the Jets.
"It gets tough because you're organising, you're getting players called up to the first team, session plans to do, " Zane said.
"It's more so, could I have managed it? Yes, but it's how you want to do it.
"The time taken to communicate with players, that starts to become too much because you have two sets of players.
"I thought then, is that fair on the players? Probably not.
"You want to give 100 per cent and anything less than that isn't good enough for me. And they are in a window of opportunity now [at Broadmeadow].
"They are built to win things, so they need someone who makes them the centre of attention.
"The Jets were always going to take precedence."
Zane said he was also conscious of potential perceptions of a conflict of interest in holding both positions.
"Perceptions are perceptions and everyone will have their views, so this takes away that," he said of the decision.
"We all just need to work together to make sure the Jets are healthy and that will in turn I think produce an even higher level in the local comp."
Zane's Jets side start their campaign in the Football NSW League Two Men's first-grade competition on February 5. The Jets' 13-18s age groups are in the top FNSW youth league.
"There's a lot of good things happening in the academy, but there's no doubt a lot of work to do and as a town we have to start producing players," he said. "The stats are fairly bleak over the years.
"We need to go up, it's about development but we need to win [promotion], which for me is part of that development.
"We need to get the youth up into the higher divisions where good performances are noticed more because of the competition they are achieved against. If you start to perform in NPL 2 or even 1, that's a step underneath the A-League and for the first team coach, that would be very useful.
"It's important we get promotion and the younger teams remain where they are. I think from then, you will get a steady flow."
He was confident Bennis, a long-time captain and multiple trophy winner as a player at Broadmeadow, was the right man to take the reins at Magic Park.
"He's been under [former Magic coach] Ruben [Zadkovich] and myself and he's always had a good football mind," he said.
"He'll put his own little spin on things and I'm sure that squad are ready for success."
Bennis welcomed the opportunity but said it had come sooner than expected.
"The timing is probably not ideal, as in how close we are to the season, but when you look at football across the world, it comes at awkward times sometimes and it is an opportunity, so we'll see how it goes," Bennis said.
Magic finished second on the ladder last year with a youthful squad and Bennis expected them to be competitive again. However, he was expecting to lose players who are trialling with Victorian NPL clubs.
"There's a few players who will probably move down to Melbourne, so we'll just have to see where we'll sit after all that and go from there," he said.
"We'll be competitive and I expect us to be thereabouts but obviously we'll have to see about these players and that will impact where we're at."
Former A-League player Andrew Hoole is coaching Magic's reserve grade side and is expected to assist Bennis.
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