Dr Joseph Casamento has many names. He is affectionately known as Dr Joe to his thousands of patients. More widely among the Randwick Rugby Club footballers as Dr Death. To his 25 grandchildren as Nonno. And to me, and his eight children, simply as Dad. But today he has a new name – announced in the Australia Day Honours List of 2025! That of recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia. He now has the proud honour of being called Dr Joseph Casamento OAM.
To say we are proud is an understatement. Being granted permission by the Governor-General to use those three little initials at the end of your name is literally priceless. All dad ever asked for whenever his birthday came around was RESPECT. And now he has been given than but the community he served so lovingly for so many years.
Dad is deserving of his OAM for many reasons. But it was specifically his service to Randwick Rugby Club – where he volunteered for over 45 years as club doctor, week in, week out – for which he was awarded. He worked every single Thursday night during training and every Saturday for those 45 years during the Rugby season on top of his 70+ hour week in the surgery. It was all unpaid volunteer work. Four decades of service is an incredible achievement in any area, but especially so when it is service based purely on unconditional love. The Order of Australia is the pre-eminent means by which Australia recognises the outstanding and meritorious service of its citizens. His citation in this years Australia Day 2025 Honours List is: “For service to rugby union as club doctor”.
There is little doubt Dad is as much a part of the hallowed turf at Coogee Oval as the sea breeze and the spirit of Randwick’s running game. While the household names Campese, Kearns and Ella are synonymous with Randwick Rugby – so too is the name Casamento when it comes to dedication and passion for the Galloping Greens.
The Galloping Greens
Dad has been a lifetime servant of Randwick Rugby Club since the first time he ran onto the field with his doctor’s bag in 1978. Then club President, Ron Meagher, persuaded him to help on the side-line of an under-6 primary school rugby game – while they watched their sons, Paul and Joe, play.
To have someone you trust as your doctor – not just about medical issues – is a rare gift. “Joe has that ability to be professional, calm, and steady and make you smile in his gentle way, all the while simultaneously stitching your scalp back into place,” former Wallaby Warwick Waugh (pictured left with Dad) once told me. “He is one of the most genuine people you ever could meet. His classic line was ‘let me have a look at’ – *crack* and the bone would be back in place before you could count to three.” He was famous for that nose snap. Hence, I imagine, the tag “Dr Death”.
He became a confidante to generations of players, who would welcome his steady bandy legs walking towards them on the field as blood poured from a wound to steady the ship. “When his hands started working on you, and he looked over the end of those glasses at the end of his nose, you knew you were going to be right,” says Waugh – who’s nose, ears and head were patched up by dad’s trusty scalpel in the Randwick shed on many occasions. “He would just take control and calmly deal with what needed to be done, consistent and solid.”
Anyone who has met Dad will describe him as devoted and dedicated to the players and his patients. He is admired for his work ethic and the fact he never has a bad word to say about anyone.
A little boy gazing out of a fruit shop window
Born and bred in Darlo, Dad knew he wanted to help care for people from an early age. The son of Italian migrant fruiterers, from the Aeolian Island of Salina off Sicily, Dad grew up in the fruit shop opposite St Vincent’s Hospital. He recalls watching the ambulances arrive from his bedroom window and dreaming of one day becoming a doctor.
After excelling in academics at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill, Dad won a scholarship to Sydney University to study Medicine. He continued his medical training at St Vincent’s Hospital – yes the hospital he had dreamed of as a young boy – and then took up his residency at Concord Hospital in 1965. It was there he met an English nurse, Lis, who he will tell you chased him round Ward 19, till he succumbed. She of course has the real version. They celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary last year.
He established his medical practice at 7 Vicar street Coogee in 1972 – after working at The Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, England. Oxford is where mum is from and The Radcliffe where she trained as a nurse. It was there they had their first daughter, Maria. The first of five girls and eight children. The family has now grown to 25 grandchildren – with the first great grandchild on the way.
Not one for indulgent pastimes, Dad found the perfect hobby when he merged the love he had developed for the game of rugby at Joeys with his medical skills. And while he will tell you he was in the 2nd XV at school, as well as the Vinnie’s and Concord Hospital teams – and flex that he could do the 100-yard sprint in under 11 seconds (literally showing us his apparent thigh muscles at the dinner table)….those are not the skills Randwick would come to know and love him for.
His position with the club would be the closest he would get to the action of the game he says they play in heaven. His Doctors bag full of sterile suture packs and his beloved myrtle green tie would take up a special place in his heart for the next four decades.
And thus began a lifelong association and dedication to the Randwick Rugby Club. While others play golf, Dad only has one passion other than family and church (and the odd racetrack bet of course) and that is Randwick. It goes family, church, rugby, races. And generally, not in that order.
During his four decades as the club’s Honorary Medical Officer – alongside a team including Di Long and Paul Raftos, Dad oversaw the scalp stitching of Michael Cheika and the head injuries of Kevin Phibbs in the backroom. He kept the skin on Simon Poidevan and tended to the dislocated kneecaps of Tim Coppa among hundreds of other injuries.
He was instrumental in setting up the clubs first medical insurance for players, the medical facilities still used here today, and bringing a level of professionalism to a then amateur era. His quick on field response no doubt saved countless crooked noses and unsightly scars.
A highlight for Dad was being assistant doctor for the first World Cup in 1987 – where he made headlines when he upset the English World Cup team by sending home one of their key players with severe concussion – a move ahead of its time. Joining the NSW Waratahs medical team for the first Super 12 season in 1996 – where he travelled to South Africa and New Zealand – was also a highlight as well as the multiple overseas trips with Randwick.
An old school GP, who looks after people from cradle to old age and all their families in between, Dad’s work in concussion, neck injuries, dislocated shoulders and fractures is legendary. It was often said in the sheds, if you hadn’t suffered a field dressing, a cat gut stitching or copped an on-the-go pain killer injection at the hands of Doctor Joe you hadn’t played for Randwick.
He served Randwick Rugby Club for over 40 years, barely missing a Saturday or a Thursday night training session during that period, strapping, snapping broken noses back into place and stitching wounds in-between his 70-hour week in the surgery.
His Coogee waiting room often looked like a Randwick convention tumbling onto Coogee Bay Road, the old rocking horse, and jellybeans he dished out familiar to many. His home in Maroubra often a revolving door of Poidevons, Campese’s and Ella Brothers, all routinely popping in for medical advice.
In more recent years it was his corner room at Royal Randwick Medical Practice where his loyal patients still lined up outside his surgery door every day. At 80 he was still an essential worker, not missing a day during Covid despite the risks and delivering Covid vaccinations at his clinic.
When Dad was nominated to become a life member of Randwick in 2001, he was the first non-playing person to join those illustrious ranks. It was a moment so special to him, he felt it was the proudest accolade he had ever received. He couldn’t believe the privilege and honour. It was a testament to his standing within the club. And I know this OAM – The Medal of the Order of Australia – awarded for service worthy of particular recognition now sits up there with that honour.
La Famiglia…
Dad is a proud husband to Elisabeth (affectionately known as Lizzy). They have been married for 55 years. He is father to eight children and 25 grandchildren with his first great grandchild on the way. He is a committed family man, a hardworking member of the community and also an active member of his local church community at St Mary’s and St Joseph’s Parish in Maroubra. He worked full time for 55 years – 70 hours a week – as a dedicated GP at his surgery where he was much loved and valued. I still get stopped in the street by people who tell me he changed or saved their life. There is little doubt he has left his imprint on the hearts of the Randwick/Coogee community.
A percentage of his practice were Italian migrants and he was bi-lingual – so he was incredibly helpful and instrumental to the Italian community as well. His other volunteer work was looking after the nuns at Brigidine Randwick Convent for decades. It’s why my four sisters and I went to school there. His family home was a revolving door after hours as well.
Now in his retirement, and despite battling several health complications, he still manages to get to Coogee Beach twice a week to meet up with the mates he made at Coogee Oval. The group who sat on the half way line every week of the season – meet at the bench dedicated to a former Randwick player. Dad always put the club first and has dedicated his life to this community and the friends he made there.
There are many who still seek his advice – even if it is now while he holds court at a coffee shop table. And his loyal patients still deliver panettone’s and whisky at Christmas time. His passion and love for rugby has continued. A retirement trip to the World Cup in Paris with my ever-patient mum, Lis, was a highlight after a trip of a lifetime to his homeland in Sicily – where I was lucky enough to have travelled with mum, dad and two of my sisters, Maria and Margaret – as well as my cousin Anne and dozens of other aunties, uncles and cousins to a family reunion on Salina in 2023. It really was the trip of a lifetime with memories I will treasure forever.
I know the club thanks you for your service, Dad. You are a loyal, dedicated and a widely loved member of the club and your immense impact is immeasurable. Not only as club doctor for so many years, and as a friend and confidant to many generations of players and their families, but for so many people’s lives in this community. You have left your mark on Randwick’s treasured turf.
It’s impossible to put into words how proud us children feel. Not only about this honour. But what having you as a Dad is like. It’s pride. It’s joy. It’s an innate sense of goodness. It’s community. It’s the mother who asks how you are doing and the children now grown up who clearly see you as their special person. Describing what it’s like to have you as a dad is more than a word. It’s a feeling It goes so far beyond description, even I – who is never short of a word – find myself unable to find one big enough. So I will just go back to those three little initials you can now scrawl in that terrible doctors spider handwriting of yours – forevermore. OAM. I can assure you those three little initials – well they say just about everything.
