Joseph Francis Karam (born 21 November 1951), also known by the nickname of "Clock",[1] is a New Zealand former representative rugby footballer who played for the All Blacks.

[citation needed] An extremely hard trainer at a club level, Karam was named as an All Black for the 1972–73 tour of the British Isles and France.

[4] Karam switched codes in 1975, signing a three-year deal with the Glenora Bears in the Auckland Rugby League competition $20,000 a year.

Karam was horrified that players on the UK tour of 1971 got a pound a day as their living allowance while rugby officials "were flying around the world drinking champagne like it was going out of fashion".

For players of "modest employment" slogging it out on the field for their country it meant that "their wife and children were starving back home".

Karam's research and sustained pressure on the justice system culminated in an appeal to the Privy Council in Britain in May 2007, at which Bain's conviction was overturned.

After his convictions were quashed, Karam allowed Bain to stay at his house in the Waikato on bail prior to the retrial two years later.

His interest in the case began in 1996, when he read a newspaper article about "an old music teacher and a bunch of young, long-haired university students" trying to raise money for Bain's appeal by selling jam.

[13] He spent it in his pursuit of the case and ended up living in 15 to 20 different rental houses over the past decade while trying to prove Bain's innocence.

Interviewed in the New Zealand Herald in 2007 under the headline Joe Karam: Freedom Fighter, he said, "For many years, the mainstream media, judiciary, and politicians just thought of me as a raving redneck who'd lost the plot.

[16] Parker and Purkiss were opposed to David Bain receiving compensation and made numerous derogatory comments about Karam on a number of websites.

In 2007 he said he planned to set up an organisation similar to the Innocence Project in the US, where those with skills and resources offer their help pro bono, like Keith Hunter and Mike Kalaugher (the Scott Watson campaigners).

[2] An attempt to establish a New Zealand Innocence Project was made in 2009 by a group of lawyers concerned about the life sentence given to Alan Hall.