West has spoken to several clubs, including Essendon, but not his beloved Bulldogs.
The 38-year-old is open to relocating his young family interstate to continue the process he hopes will one day culminate in a head coaching role at an AFL club.
West, who this year was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame, told AFL.com.au he has "gone out on a limb" in that he hasn’t been guaranteed a job at an AFL club.
After retiring in 2008 after 324 games and a club-record seven best and fairests with the Dogs, West spent three seasons as an assistant coach at Melbourne, where his responsibility was the Demons' midfield.
West has coached Werribee for the past two seasons, taking the club to successive preliminary finals. Along the way he gained invaluable experience, which he believes will make him a strong contributor to an AFL coaching panel.
"When you coach your own team, you certainly understand a lot more – the medical side, the physio, the scheduling of your own program, how to deal with 50 individual players, working out the best ways to teach, and all those sorts of things," he told AFL.com.au’s Gillette Trade Radio on Tuesday.
"It was an unbelievable experience …
"I think it now enables me to go back into the (AFL) system in any role. As a midfield player, that's ideally where you’d coach, but … it enables me to have a skill set now to coach any line or any phase of the game."
He said his involvement with Melbourne and North Melbourne – the latter through its partial alignment with Werribee – had been "priceless".
West's replacement at Werribee is John Lamont, a development coach at North Melbourne since November 2006.
Twitter: @AFL_BenCollins
