Fowler claims racial treatment as she receives bananas as present instead of flowers about dressing room incident at Montpellier.
Mary Fowler claims racist treatment at French club after receiving bananas instead of flowers as leaving present.
At the end of her final season with Montpellier in 2022, Matildas player Mary Fowler claimed to have encountered racism when she was given bananas while other team members received flowers.
Her memoir Bloom, which was published this week, contains the shocking discoveries. It describes the many difficulties she has had in her early career, including a cycle of self-harm that she has struggled to break.
She arrived to Montpellier at the age of 17, and her challenging time there came to an end three years ago when she was one of a group of people whose contracts were about to expire.
Flowers were given to other players who were also scheduled to depart, but Fowler and her friend, an international player, received nothing.
The Australian with Papua New Guinean ancestry claims she was then given bananas amid confusion in the dressing room about why some players received gifts and others did not.
“Afterwards, when we got inside the changing room, some of our teammates questioned why we hadn’t received any flowers. We shrugged our shoulders, just as clueless as they were. A few of the girls laughed about it and then one of the other players came over and handed my friend and me some bananas, saying, ‘Here, have these.’ That was the cherry on top,” she said.
“Since leaving Montpellier, my friend and I have spoken about that moment a few times. Not receiving flowers was one thing, but as two of only six black girls in the squad, receiving bananas wasn’t something I could laugh off and forget about. Was it an accident? Was it the only thing in the dressing room she could give us? Did she mean well by it?
“I’ve tried to justify it in many different ways, trying to find any indication that it was an honest mistake. But when I add in the many other times at the club when we were left feeling a similar way, it was hard to see it as merely a simple error. No matter what the intentions were, it left us feeling taken aback and upset.”