French soccer club Montpellier has denied racism allegations made by Australia forward Mary Fowler, who said a teammate gave her bananas as a departing gift in 2022.<\/p>\n
Montpellier said in a statement Thursday it discovered \u201cwith astonishment a number of accusations\u201d made by Fowler in her memoir, \u201cBloom,\u201d and said there’s no evidence to support her claims.<\/p>\n
“Some of them are particularly serious, and the shortcut that results from them \u2014 portraying the club as a racist entity \u2014 is unacceptable,\u201d Montpellier’s statement said.<\/p>\n
Fowler was 17 when she joined Montpellier in 2020 and played there for two-and-a half seasons before leaving for Manchester City.<\/p>\n
In her book, Fowler wrote that she and teammate Ashleigh Weerden were left out of a presentation for departing players, who were given flowers after the final home game of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfterwards, when we got inside the changing room, some of our teammates questioned why we hadn\u2019t received any flowers,\u201d Fowler wrote, according to excerpts of her book quoted by Australian media.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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, \u2018Here, have these.\u2019 That was the cherry on top.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince leaving Montpellier, my friend and I have spoken about that moment a few times,” she added. “Not receiving flowers was one thing, but as two of only six Black girls in the squad, receiving bananas wasn\u2019t something I could laugh off and forget about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Montpellier, which said it may take legal action, offered a different version of events.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom a purely factual standpoint, the truth leaves no room for interpretation,\u201d the club said. \u201cOn June 1, 2022, the women\u2019s team played their last home match against Bordeaux. At the end of the match, as had been customary for several seasons, two players whose contracts were expiring \u2014 and who were therefore wearing the club\u2019s colours for the last time \u2014 were honoured with a bouquet of flowers. This was neither the case for Mary Fowler nor for the teammate mentioned in her book, both of whom were still under contract with the club until June 30, 2023. It would therefore have been rather inappropriate for the club to offer them a \u2018farewell gift.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Regarding the alleged events inside the dressing room, the club said it consulted those present that day and concluded that no evidence supports Fowler’s account.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf incidents of this nature had been reported and proven, the club would have taken all necessary measures as soon as they were brought to its attention,\u201d Montpellier said. \u201cRacism is a serious issue that must not be exploited. The club wishes to reiterate its daily commitment to fighting all forms of discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French soccer club Montpellier has denied racism allegations made by Australia forward Mary Fowler, who said a teammate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-296108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}