The AFL Coaches Association has put forward a scheme that  would lead to Indigenous coaches across Australia being sponsored to spend a month at an AFL club during the pre-season NAB Challenge period as one solution to the scarcity of Aborigines  across the competition.

The 18 senior coaches have backed the idea, which also has the support of Cable, who last week called for a more meaningful pathway for Indigenous coaches.

AFLCA chief Mark Brayshaw has met with the AFL's Mark Evans regarding the project. He said on Monday: "I've seen how it works in the US with the great Bill Walsh having created a pathway in American football and I speak to our senior coaches and they all acknowledge the dearth of Aboriginal coaches in our game.

"They agree it's important to the skill set of the coaching panel that they have a strong cultural awareness and with Indigenous Australians representing 9 per cent of our players that's even more crucial.

"The Cable, Farmer story is extraordinary," Brayshaw said. "They were both unbelievably great players but you could argue their contribution to coaching was even more extraordinary given the time of their achievements.

"Historically they have contributed so much to their culture and the game's culture and you have to give credit to the boards that hired them as well."

Under the proposal, any aspiring Indigenous coach overseeing a team in country or metropolitan football could apply to spend a month at an AFL club before being sponsored to take the level three coaching course and encouraged to work towards, initially, an assistant coaching role.

However, the Cable-Farmer Scholarship proposal  has received a lukewarm response from the AFL, partly on the grounds of cost with football boss Evans saying the issue required a broader approach. Evans said the coaches' proposal of each aspirant being sponsored to the tune of $50,000 would not work under the game's new financial model.

Evans said he supported sponsoring Indigenous coaches throughout the Australian rules pathways and that the Cable-Farmer scheme could form part of a broader AFL strategy. The AFL has yet to detail a proposed move to bolster the still embryonic Indigenous coaching academies across Australia that, according to the game's Indigenous Advisory Group, remained underfunded and under-resourced.

That group earlier this year suggested clubs employing Indigenous coaches could do so without their wages falling inside the football department soft salary cap.

Brayshaw said it remained a priority for the coaches' body to identify why so few Indigenous players saw coaching as a potential career path.

Andrew McLeod, Michael O'Loughlin and Chris Johnson are three recently retired players who have resisted job offers from clubs to take on assistant roles, with Johnson pursuing a career in AFL administration and the media and O'Loughlin recently quitting his role at the Swans academy to pursue outside business interests.

Another prospect, Xavier Clarke, is coaching the Northern Territory Thunder. No Indigenous coach has been inducted into the level-four coaching program introduced last year by the AFL. Andy Lovell (Gold Coast) and Roger Hayden (Fremantle) are the only two Indigenous assistants of 178 across the AFL.

"We wouldn't want any aspiring coaches to see any impediment to coaching as a career pathway," said Brayshaw, who has spoken to number of clubs with a view to sounding out their senior Indigenous players regarding future coaching roles.

Farmer, the first Australian footballer to receive a Queen's honour - he was named a member of the order of the British Empire in 1971 - coached a total of 202 games at West Perth, Geelong and East Perth between 1968 and 1977. He was also WA's first state-of-origin coach.

Cable, the last VFL indigenous coach, told Fairfax Media last week that the dearth of Aboriginal coaches was in part explained by the lack of opportunity and role models. "Part of the reason has been the fact that they haven't been given the opportunity," he said.

"And because of that maybe they've thought it's not for them. But I think the more we keep going down this track I'm hoping we will get some of them that will come forward."

Cable coached 188 WAFL and VFL games. Since he left the North Melbourne coaching job in 1984 just seven Indigenous assistant coaches have been employed in the VFL/AFL.

The late Bill Walsh is lauded as one of the great American NFL coaches, and one of the first during the 1980s to employ multiple black assistants, several of whom went on to senior coaching.