Casey Dumont was influential again as defending champions Melbourne Victory prevailed over Melbourne City in a wild Liberty A-League Semi Final on Saturday. Originally published in January, KEEPUP’s Sacha Pisani spoke to the star goalkeeper about her life, on and off the field.
Training and a team meeting have just finished but Casey Dumont is straight in the car, on her way to her other love – nursing.
The Melbourne Victory goalkeeper is preparing for an eight-hour shift at the hospital after her Liberty A-League heroics.
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During the season, Dumont juggles football and nursing – working three-to-six times a fortnight at the hospital. In the off-season, she is works almost full-time. It’s an agreement that works between both employers through “open communication”. For example, when the 31-year-old has a game coming up, she won’t work the day before or after.
It has not impacted Dumont’s form between the sticks. Last season, her heroics in the Grand Final saw her named the Player of the Match, while she also claimed the 2022 Liberty A-League Goalkeeper of the Year.
Dumont wouldn’t want it any other way. Nursing has completely changed her life. It has also helped her overcome her biggest hurdles to get back to her sanctuary – the football field.
“Nurses are a very special kind of person because we work non-stop, burnt out but it really does help change your perspective,” Dumont tells KEEPUP.
“You know when you have those moments like ‘life sucks, this is annoying’… everyone has those moments. But when I go to work and I see a patient, I’m like, why did I even have that moment? There’s so many people worse off or unfortunately having bigger bad moments and I shouldn’t think like that.
“I guess that’s why it’s changed my mind to be so positive when I can be because when I did my Achilles, I got really sick that I actually became the patient. I was in and out of hospital for three months.
“Everyone will say nurses make the worst patient because we know the standards we should get and how we should be looked after but we don’t know how to be the patient ourselves. We don’t know how to handle pain or be sick. We know how to be burnt out but usually keep going.
“Able to understand being the nurse and the patient, it has completely changed my mindset on life that even if you might not think it’s a good moment, be appreciative because there’s people who have been in hospital for three to six moments or literally in and out of hospital everyday or having to do a three-hour drive to see a family member in hospital and I’ve been their nurse regularly and they’ve had to rely on me to be that support network.
“I don’t even know the word to use on how it changes your mind on everything.
Even if I’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed, as soon as you walk through those hospital doors, I can’t bring this to work because the patient will feed off your aura and emotion.
“You have to be the strong one for them. You have to be the one to keep them on routine etc. It’s being that little voice for them while looking after them.
“Yes we do that blood and guts stuff, vomit and poo but it’s also the little things – that therapeutic voice. It helped me knowing I could be someone else’s little voice and it helped me be my own superhero – you can do it. Yes it hurts, yes it’s going to suck, yes you have to do one more run but it’s going to be good in the long run.
“I didn’t realise how much nursing changed my life until I started doing it more regularly and how it helped me return from injury. I thought oh yeah, it’s my escape and I was able to be normal, be an adult and make money but it also helped me come back.
If I could do a 12-hour shift on my feet, why can’t I do an hour of rehab?
“It helps you fight that battle of that negative voice that you always have in your mind – ‘can you? should you?’ and straight away yes! Shut up and yes. I’m going to do it because I’ve just done so many hours looking after people and I know I can do that.”
‘F****** oath!’
Not many players have experienced what Dumont has gone through during her career.
From osteitis pubis, a lacerated liver and an anterior cruciate ligament injury to a torn Achilles tendon. There was also regular hospital stays.
Dumont has been through adversity, but she has come out the other side with a new appreciation of football and life.
“F****** oath!,” Dumont responds when asked about appreciating things a lot more after her experiences. “When I was younger and I got my first injury, I’m like I’ll be back it’s fine. I just brushed it off.
Then I did my knee, back then it was like I was at the age where this could really end my career… oh my god I need to be back playing. I was back playing and that was great. Then when my Achilles happened, holy s***, either I need to change completely or my career is actually done.
“You have so many what if moments and I think that’s what made me realise coming back from my Achilles, not only was my health really bad… people say exercise makes your mind right and that really was the case.
“That taken away and then me being sick and in hospital regularly, I need to change because I want another go. I want another go because all these what-if moments need to be completed and I want to end happy, not on an injury. I don’t want my career taken out of my hands, it’s when I want to leave.
“Injuries change your mindset big time. It really does make or break you. It makes you go ‘I have to find another thing to do’. Luckily I’ve had my nursing throughout that to have the best of both worlds that I’m like I’ll go back to nursing but then I’m still not complete, I have to go back to football. Injuries make you so much stronger.
When you’re playing and training regularly, you don’t think of the little things like I have another session tomorrow or I have a game coming up. When you’re injured, you’re like when is my next session?
“You have to prepare for it because it’s so limited that you have to grab it with both hands. When you have it constantly because you’re fine and healthy, you don’t think of those things.”
Dumont the Matilda?
A four-time Liberty A-League champion, Dumont has been a colossal figure for Jeff Hopkins’ Victory.
The driving force behind Victory’s triumphant 2021-22 season, Dumont has been instrumental once more as they stand on the cusp of another Grand Final. That form has catapulted her name into the Matildas conversation.
Dumont has three Australia caps since 2015, though she has not been called into camp since the 2018 AFC Women’s Asian Cup, when Alen Stajcic was in charge. But hailed as the best goalkeeper in the Liberty A-League by her head coach, talk is growing for the Victory star to be drafted into the Matildas squad for next month’s squad.
Is Dumont buying into the international talk, with the FIFA Women’s World Cup on the horizon on home soil in July?
“I just want to play. I just want to have fun. And you know what? Whatever happens in the future, happens,” Dumont says.
I just want to enjoy the now. I had the now taken away from me two years ago, so I really want to live in the moment.
“It’s great to get all this positivity but I just want to play with my team, have good games and have a smile on my face because I don’t know what tomorrow brings, I don’t know what a week brings and I don’t know what six weeks brings. Anything can happen in that moment.
“Right now, it’s nice to have in the back of my head that it might happen, but it also might not. I can only control what I can control and that’s how I’m playing. It’s a big year for everyone – the Matildas, our league. Hopefully people want to now come because the World Cup is here.
“If it happens, it happens. I’ll grab it with two hands if it does but I’m also realistic that it might not. I’ll just enjoy life as I am.”
She adds: “I’m enjoying playing and I’m a big believer that if you’re enjoying what you’re doing, you’re going to get the best out of you. That’s a big thing. I enjoy taking the field and playing. Having so many injuries, I also know it’s not forever and it can be taken away from you literally in a second. I’m just doing what I need to do for the team but also for my own mind.”
As Dumont says, she is just enjoying the present. Being out on the field with her team-mates.
“It’s always good to know you’ve done your job for the team. Everyone knows playing goalkeeper, it’s a really tough position because you’re either the hero or the b******. There’s no in between,” she says.
“It’s nice to know when the team relies on me, I was able to do the job that was needed because obviously I’m relying on them for 80 other minutes of the game. The 10 minutes I get and it might literally be 10 seconds here and there, it’s good my team-mates will be able to go ‘it’s okay, Casey’s got it’.
“It’s praises to everyone. It’s not just me doing the performances I’m doing. I wouldn’t perform the way I am without my team-mates because I know they’re stepping up and performing too.
“It’s the same at training. Our training standards are so good, it’s help me get fit and making sure I’m making these saves because I am making them at training because the girls are working so hard to ensure we’re ready for anything that comes at us.”
She adds: “Ask anyone who is out with injury, you miss the game. A part of you is missing. I kind of expected these performances from myself. It’s always been there. It’s just been a case of I’ve either been unfit, overweight or carrying an injury or something. Having the confidence of everyone around you, it helps build your own confidence.”
