NRL grand final winner Brett White has emerged as one of the frontrunners to become Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart's new assistant in the wake of Dean Pay's departure.
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Stuart has started his search for a new assistant after Pay was handed the Canterbury Bulldogs' head coaching role on Thursday.
Pay was handed the gig after impressing the Bulldogs' board in an interview on Tuesday, ousting Canterbury assistant Jim Dymock for the role after Des Hasler was sacked.
White and Mounties coach Steve Antonelli are in the box seat to replace Pay, who formed a three-pronged attack in Canberra with Stuart and Mick Crawley.
Raiders chief executive Don Furner confirmed the Raiders will look internally first, with White having spent the past two seasons coaching the club's under 20s side.
"They've coached underneath Ricky so I think he'll look there first and then we'll go from there. We've got a bit of time obviously, [we're] not training for a while," Furner said.
Former New South Wales and Australian prop White has been giving Stuart a helping hand for a number of seasons and the 35-year-old looms as an ideal fit with the national youth competition shutting down.
Stuart has already backed Bulldogs-bound Pay as he prepares for the rigours of a full-time head coaching role, saying he will never be more ready.
Pay was contracted to the Raiders until the end of next season but the Raiders board has decided it won't stand in the way should an assistant coach be approached about a lead role at another club.
Pay's departure ends a five-year partnership with Stuart, after the pair teamed up for one season at Parramatta before moving to Canberra.
The 48-year-old was also being sounded out about coaching the Warrington Wolves in the English Super League, having had an interview with their chief executive Karl Fitzpatrick last week.
"It's not as if we weren't expecting him to look at one of the two jobs," Furner said.
"There was a chance he was going to be offered one of those jobs or both of them. We spoke to the board about if they were going to look for a job and move just to be an assistant somewhere else, we wouldn't support that.
"But if they were moving to be a head coach somewhere, we would support that. We certainly didn't want anything happening in the middle of the season and that's what was happening last year, which can be disruptive.
"But at the end of the season, you've got time to plan so the timing for us was a bit better this year than what was being discussed last year."
Pay has been in charge of Canberra's defensive structures but Stuart has said he'd been an invaluable member of his coaching panel for his contribution across the board.
The former State of Origin star signed a two-year extension with the Green Machine last year but will now look to take the Bulldogs back to the finals in the wake of Hasler's sacking.
Pay has been linked with the Bulldogs job for almost a year, after the Canterbury board began to have doubts about Hasler.
His signing is seen as a chance for the Bulldogs to rediscover the roots, with the 1998 Dally M prop of the year playing 108 games for the club, as well as 76 with Parramatta.
Meanwhile, the Canberra Region Rugby League announced a 7.7 per cent increase in the number of people playing rugby league over the past 12 months.
The boom of women's sport continues with the number of female participants rising to 796 - an increase of 82 per cent.
