My Dad… The Good Doc OAM!

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: 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 that by 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. Every Thursday night of training and every Saturday of the rugby season, on top of a 70-hour week in the surgery. All of it unpaid. His citation in the 2025 Honours List reads: "For service to rugby union as club doctor."

The Galloping Greens

Dad has been a lifetime servant of Randwick since the first time he ran onto the field with his doctor's bag in 1978, when then-president Ron Meagher persuaded him to help on the sideline of an under-6s game while they watched their sons play. 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.

He became a confidante to generations of players, who would welcome his steady bandy legs walking towards them as blood poured from a wound. "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. Anyone who has met Dad will describe him as devoted and dedicated — 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, 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 — watching the ambulances arrive from his bedroom window and dreaming of becoming a doctor. A scholarship to Sydney University followed, then training at that very hospital, and a residency at Concord in 1965 — where he met an English nurse, Lis, who he will tell you chased him around Ward 19 till he succumbed. She, of course, has the real version. They celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary last year.

He established his practice at 7 Vicar Street, Coogee in 1972. During four decades as the club's Honorary Medical Officer he oversaw the scalp stitching of Michael Cheika, kept the skin on Simon Poidevin and tended the dislocated kneecaps of Tim Coppa among hundreds of other injuries. He was instrumental in setting up the club's first medical insurance for players, and was assistant doctor at the first World Cup in 1987 — where he made headlines by sending home a key English player with severe concussion, a move well ahead of its time.

It was often said in the sheds: if you hadn't suffered a field dressing, a catgut stitching or copped an on-the-go painkiller injection at the hands of Doctor Joe, you hadn't played for Randwick. When he was nominated as a life member in 2001, he was the first non-playing person to join those illustrious ranks.

La Famiglia…

Dad is a proud husband to Elisabeth (affectionately known as Lizzy), father to eight children and Nonno to 25 grandchildren, with his first great-grandchild now here. He worked full time for 55 years as a much-loved GP — 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 and Coogee community.

I know the club thanks you for your service, Dad. Your immense impact is immeasurable — as club doctor, as friend and confidant to generations of players, and 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 we children feel — even I, who is never short of a word, can't find one big enough. So I'll just go back to those three little initials you can now scrawl in that terrible doctor's spider handwriting of yours, forevermore. OAM. I can assure you, those three little initials say just about everything.