EXCLUSIVE: Phil Gould calls for big Origin change after 'amateurish' team announcements

Former NSW coach Phil Gould has called for changes to the "amateurish" State of Origin team announcements, following an "embarrassing" live stream this week.

While leaked names and teams prior to the official announcements have become the norm in recent years, NSW and Queensland officially unveiled their squads on Monday morning.

In the past, the Blues would name their side on the Sunday night - but with the final game of Magic Round not finishing until 8.30pm, they opted to hold off.

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What followed was a live stream on the NSWRL YouTube channel with coach Laurie Daley standing awkwardly alongside chief executive Dave Trodden.

Daley then read out the 20-man squad, where he named former Maroons hooker Casey McGuire instead of young centre Casey McLean in an untimely gaffe that went viral.

Nine commentator Mat Thompson couldn't believe the way the Blues handled the monumental moment and urged the NRL to improve how teams are announced.

"I'm assuming this would be a big media conference, so you can imagine my surprise when I go to the NSWRL website and up pops Dave Trodden and Laurie, standing on what I'd described as a table you would stand at a pub," he said on Wide World Of Sports' Six Tackles With Gus this week.

"Laurie reads the team out straight down the camera, no graphics, nothing else. Dave Trodden is trying to MC the thing, his microphone didn't work for the first minute and on the back of that, they take questions from people sending through on YouTube.

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"This is a multi-billion dollar game and State of Origin is the pinnacle of it. Can we please do better than that? That was embarrassing.

"If they wanted to do it on Monday, why wouldn't they come in here to Nine, who is the broadcast partner of the game … Laurie can announce it on national television.

"It should be an event, we should have both teams announced at the same time."

Gould - who is regarded as NSW's greatest coach - echoed those sentiments and urged the league's hierarchy to overhaul the way the Origin announcements are handled.

"We've talked in previous years about the obsession with the media of getting the teams first and announcing the team on the weekend," he said.

"We had a number of rumours and innuendo over the weekend and none of them were right. I think from that perspective, the coaches did a good job of keeping the teams in-house as much as possible, even though these things do leak out.

"I remember in the old days, you'd sit at 6pm and it would be on the radio. The announcement shouldn't be up to the QRL and NSWRL to do it their own ways.

"Both coaches should be in one room with the chairman or whoever and the NRL should conduct it. It should be an event and there should be a better and more professional way to do it, other than the way we've done it seemingly forever.

"We missed some great opportunities. It is done very amateurishly, it always has been."