AUSTRALIA and Manchester City forward Mary Fowler has alleged she was subjected to racist behaviour during her time at Montpellier, recounting she and a team-mate were handed bananas instead of flowers as departing players, an experience she says she “couldn’t laugh off.”

In her new memoir Bloom, the 22-year-old lifts the lid on what she describes as a pattern of discriminatory moments during her second season at the French club. Fowler writes that both she and Ashleigh Weerden, two of only six black players in the squad, were singled out in an incident that left them feeling “humiliated.”

Fowler says the moment occurred after Montpellier’s final home game of the 2021-22 season when the club held a small presentation for departing players. According to her account, she and Weerden were conspicuously left out.

Quoting a passage from the chapter titled Not So Great, the Sydney Morning Herald reports Fowler writing: “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.”

In the same section, Fowler makes clear that the hurt went far beyond the gesture itself: “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?”

Fowler stresses this was not an isolated matter. She writes there were “many other times” during her second year at the club in which she and Weerden were “left feeling a similar way,” making it difficult to accept the banana incident as “merely a simple error.”

In a statement on their website, Montpellier described their “amazement” at discovering the claims made by their former player.

They wrote: “The MHSC yesterday discovered with amazement a number of accusations made by Mary Fowler, one of its former players, in her autobiography. Some of them are particularly serious and the resulting simplification that paints the club as racist is unacceptable.”

The club claimed that both Fowler and Weerden were still contracted with the club at the time until June 30th 2023 and “it would therefore have been rather tactless for the club to offer a parting gift”.

Montpellier also claimed that there was “no evidence” that a former teammate gave Fowler and Weerden bananas, and added that the club is against “all forms of discrimination”.

They wrote: “Concerning the events that would have taken place behind closed doors in the locker room at the end of the match, after consulting the people present that day, there is no evidence to corroborate her claims or even to identify the supposed perpetrator.

“If facts of this nature had been reported and proven, the club would have taken all the necessary measures as soon as they were reported. The subject of racism is a serious one that cannot be exploited. The club would like to reiterate its daily commitment to the fight against all forms of discrimination.”