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Matildas star Mary Fowler has revealed she was shockingly given a bunch of bananas by some of her former team-mates as a leaving present when she departed her old club, Montpellier.
She stated that she found it ‘hard to see it as merely a simple error.’
The 22-year-old, who joined the French outfit in 2020 at the age of 17. She’d leave the club two years later, going on to join her current club, Manchester City.
Fowler made the revelation in a chapter of her new memoir ‘Bloom’, in which the forward also opened up on her struggles with mental health and how she heartbreakingly almost took her own life.
During the chapter, which was entitled ‘No Great Days’, the Australian, who returned 10 goals in 40 appearances for Montpellier, also recounted how she felt neglected by the club, noting that she had once been dismissed by a physiotherapist after claiming that she had been suffering from pains in her chest.
Fowler stated that other players who were leaving the club at the same time were given parting gifts by other members of the squad. But she revealed that no one had bought gifts for her and her friend Ashleigh Weerden.
‘Afterwards, when we got inside the changing room, some of our team-mates questioned why we hadn’t received any flowers…’ Fowler wrote in Bloom.
‘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”.
‘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.’
Fowler said the shocking present left her questioning herself.
‘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… 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.’
She admits in the book that she regrets not doing something about the incident at the time.
‘But instead, we just sat there holding those bananas,’ she adds.
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Fowler later added she felt herself and Weerden had experienced different treatment from club staff to other players at Montpellier.
She recalled in the book how she was once disciplined for catching a lift home from training with Weerden, because the 22-year-old Aussie didn’t have a driving licence.
She explained: ‘Moments like this made it hard for us to not notice we were being treated differently to other players.’
She then added that a physiotherapist had accused her of faking chest pain after a club doctor had dismissed her claims.
‘I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Frustrated, I told him I wasn’t making it up, that I could never make up something that could be related to my heart,’ she said.
Daily Mail has contacted Montpellier for comment.
Fowler’s claims come after several other players have spoken out against racism in Women’s football.
Lionesses star Jess Carter said in August that she too wished shed spoken out against the abuse that she had suffered racial abuse on social media.
‘Part of me wished I spoke out about it straight away after the first game,’ the England star said.
‘Because I think then I wouldn’t have maybe [been] silently trying to deal with it by myself.’
More recently, Tottenham star Jess Naz, was targeted with racist abuse online. The 24-year-old Spurs forward stated she was ‘done being quiet’ after revealing she had been targeted on social media.
‘Racism in any form is unacceptable and is important to address this behaviour and ensure that steps are taken to prevent it from happening again,’ she wrote.
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