"It's about doing the one thing you don't want to do first," he said.

"But if you do that first, psychologically, everything else in the day is going to be easy.

"That's helped me in the past three months because, at times, I've had to have a cold shower just to get myself on my feet."

And little wonder as the past nine months have been a tough road for the 50-year-old Mr White.

The Broncos boss was diagnosed with a brain tumour last June and also recently lost his father.

But as this week's Australian Story on the ABC shows, Mr White is determined to remain in high spirits, with the help of his family – both his wife and daughters and the rugby league club he has called home for six years.

In Whitey's Way, which will air on Monday night, Mr White's career as a police officer is shown to have shaped the man who runs Queensland's biggest sporting brand.

He met Broncos coach Wayne Bennett at the police academy and his experiences in outback Queensland – in particular Mount Isa – have helped shaped his business acumen.

Disciplinary acumen, too, when it comes to dealing with players' off-field indiscretions.

The reaction to a nightclub incident involving two players has more than a whiff of old school country policing about it.

But his biggest challenge came in June 2015, when a day at the Broncos' Red Hill base would change his life.

"I was feeling on top of my game," he said.

"I wouldn't use the term 'bullet proof' but I felt as healthy as I'd felt. I trained really hard on the morning that I went into work.

"…So I'd had probably 12 or 13 phone conversations over the period of an hour and all of a sudden, you know, my hands started to shake and I was obviously thinking I was having a heart attack or a stroke.

"Something was happening that was totally beyond my control, which was absolutely frightening and it was split second, but in my mind I could recount all the things I was thinking about, my family…"

Broncos chairman Dennis Watt was first on the scene.

"I went out in the corridor and we found him there wandering around looking distressed and saying 'I'm really unwell'," he said.

"I'm thinking if Paul White's saying 'I'm really unwell, I need to go to hospital', he must be unwell."

That hospital visit revealed a "shadow" on his brain – an inoperable tumour.

Like everything else in Mr White's life, the Broncos boss was determined to take the challenge head-on.

"It came knocking on my door, but it came knocking on the door of someone with a life history of taking on challenges," he said.

Australian Story will air on ABC1 at 8pm Monday.