By Frances Howe
Under the bright lights of the rival sheds in the moments before Queensland’s win in last week’s Origin decider, players gathered before cloth-covered bowls. They waited to step forward, bow their heads and inhale the curiously potent perfume that lay inside.
The ceremony aired on Wednesday, leaving spectators to wonder what kind of pre-match communion they had borne witness to and to ask what exactly the players were inhaling beneath Accor Stadium.
Queensland team doctor Matthew Hislop dispelled rumours about what was inside his team’s bowl, declaring instead that the elixir was “nothing sinister”. Instead, players were inhaling a simple combination of boiling water and eucalyptus oil, an aid to clearing the sinuses.
“It’s pretty pungent,” Hislop said, explaining why some players withdraw their heads back or sneeze after sniffing the potion. “Some of them, you know, breathe in a little harder than they should have, and you can gag a bit.”
Although he couldn’t speak on behalf of the NSW camp, Hislop said he wasn’t aware of teams still using a more disputed aid known as smelling salts – the common name for a combination of ammonium carbonate that is also sometimes paired with eucalyptus oil.
Sniffing ammonium carbonate is an old-fashioned method of waking someone after they’ve fainted, and a frowned-upon practice in the treatment of concussions in professional sports. The NFL banned the treatment, as did the NRL chief medical officer, Ron Muratore, in 2013. It’s still prohibited for treating concussions under the NSW Rugby League’s concussion policy.
Hudson Young is tackled in the State of Origin decider.Credit: Getty Images
Luke Bowen, a senior exercise physiologist, said that although smelling salts have been outlawed under concussion protocols, it’s still a common ritual in rugby league.
“I don’t think they’re prohibited, but yes, they are widely used in rugby league,” Bowen said, before adding that some clubs also used Vicks VapoRub just as often.
Smelling salts have also been used by weightlifters, although there’s little evidence to show it has more than a placebo effect or that they don’t wear off by the time the anthems are sung.
“It increases your alertness and your arousal. There is some weak evidence around increasing heart rate, increasing respiratory rate,” he added.
It becomes an issue when treating concussions if serious trauma is pushed aside for quicker recoveries, or if the sudden jolt from a player after smelling the salts aggravates a spinal injury.
Sniffing more illicit substances as a pre-match ritual was commonplace in many sports in the latter half of the 20th century. Abuse of cocaine and other stimulants was reportedly prevalent in the NBA, MLB and NFL in the US in the 1970s and 80s as frequently as physiotherapists’ tape, but the trend began a century earlier than that, with illegal stimulants the go-to of generations of cyclists.
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