The NRL announced the punishment on Tuesday afternoon, issuing Stuart with a breach notice after described Penrith's Jaeman Salmon as a "weak gutted dog" last weekend.

"The breach notice proposes a fine for Stuart of $25,000 and a suspension from all club activities with the Canberra Raiders for one full week commencing 4pm today," the NRL said.

"The period of suspension prohibits Stuart from performing any duties as head coach of the Raiders, including attendance at team or individual training or coaching sessions or the Raiders' facilities.

"Furthermore, he cannot provide instruction or direction to the team, individual players or club officials during the period of suspension including before, during or after any matches within this period.

"Stuart will be unable to return to coaching duties until 4pm on Tuesday, August 16."

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NRL boss Andrew Abdo condemned Stuart's actions.

"Leaders need to set the standard in the game. The comments are completely unacceptable from any individual let alone an official of such experience and standing," Abdo said.

"This is a highly unusual case, and we have taken the significant step of proposing a suspension from his duties for one week. This will be a full suspension precluding Ricky from having any involvement with any club activity either in person or remotely. Furthermore, the fine must not be paid by the club but by Ricky himself."

Stuart will have five business days to respond to the breach notice, but the Raiders and Stuart have both indicated they will accept the punishment.

Stuart was at Raiders training on Tuesday morning and led the team through their session as they started preparations for a must-win game against the Dragons.

But he will be banned from returning to Raiders HQ until Wednesday morning next week, will not be able to contact any staff or players and will miss the crucial clash.

The Raiders will turn to Stuart's assistants to take the reins, but the club will not appoint a replacement head coach for the week.

Brett White, Andrew McFadden and Mick Crawley will continue in their regular assistant roles, and then divide up head coaching commitments for the rest of the week.

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The Raiders board met on Sunday to discuss Stuart's outburst, and chief executive Don Furner said they had agreed to accept the NRL's punishment.

"We'll move forward from there. It's a public job and a hard job, [Stuart's] obviously very disappointed [with what happened] and he's embarrassed," Furner said earlier on Tuesday.

"He's going to have to put it behind him and move on, and we'll support him."

Stuart said his hostility stemmed from family history with Salmon, but few details are known about what triggered Stuart to be so scathing.

Stuart's son Jackson played in the same junior team as Salmon at Cronulla and there was an incident between the two more than a decade ago. It's understood it was one of a number of incidents.

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The Raiders must win their four remaining games this year to be any chance of making the finals and Stuart's absence is a critical blow to that.

However, Canberra officials believe the team will cope given Stuart and several other NRL coaches have been forced to miss training or games in the past two years because of COVID-19 protocols.

Captain Elliott Whitehead says the players will rally around Stuart and get on with keeping their NRL season alive.

The Raiders skipper, who was sitting alongside Stuart when he called Penrith half Jaeman Salmon a "weak-gutted dog" in Saturday's post-match press conference, said the controversy wouldn't distract the team at a critical stage of their season.

"We've got his back, he had his reasons," Whitehead told reporters on Tuesday.

"I'm not going to go into them but we're all supportive of Ricky and he knows he probably shouldn't have said it on that platform.

"He's upset he let his emotions get the better of him."

Whitehead said their gameplan would need to come to the fore to make his job as easy as possible.

"Whoever comes in, nothing changes ... we've got a gameplan that we've got to stick to, we've used that for the last couple of weeks so nothing will change in that department either," he said.

"As a club we're moving forward and not trying to worry about last week, we've got a job to do this week and that's to win a game of footy.

"We are disappointed we lost last week but we're trying to bounce back from that because we have to."

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