Latest news with #ChrisScott
7NEWS
a day ago
- Sport
- 7NEWS
Geelong champion Tom Stewart subbed out with knee injury during big win over St Kilda
Geelong will be sweating on the fitness of star defender Tom Stewart after suffering a knee complaint during Sunday's win over St Kilda. The five-time All-Australian was subbed out during the third term of the 31-point victory. He had ice applied to his left knee, while he had a compression bandage on his right knee. But despite the multiple ailments, the vice-captain appeared unfazed as he watched the remainder of the match on the bench. Coach Chris Scott said the move was mainly precautionary and they hope he will be fine for next week's clash against North Melbourne. 'We think it's fine. I've said a few times in this forum we've got a low tolerance these days for keeping guys on when they can,' Scott said. 'The question isn't 'can they keep going', it is 'should they keep going'. 'The strong suggestion is that he'll be OK for next week and hopefully that's on the back of chopping him out a little earlier.' Looking a class above their opponents all day, the Cats won 17.11 (113) to 12.10 (82) in front of a vocal home crowd of 29,985 spectators. The writing was on the wall early, as Geelong kicked four unanswered goals to start the match, and while the Saints fought back hard to stay in touch in an entertaining end-to-end battle, the home side answered every challenge. St Kilda's engine room battled hard throughout, finishing with more clearances and contested possessions than the Cats, but Geelong's class on the outside proved the difference. With coaches Ross Lyon and Chris Scott content to let their midfields fight it out without any hard tags, St Kilda Star Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera emerged as the most damaging player on the ground. The out-of-contract 22-year-old was everywhere for the Saints, using his running power to collect 36 disposals, his smarts around stoppages to win 10 clearances, and his exquisite kicking to snare two goals and set up multiple others. But while Wanganeen-Milera was clearly the Saints' best player, the Cats had even contributors across the board. Max Holmes ran riot through the middle with 32 disposals, while Ollie Dempsey (25 possessions) was outstanding in his 50th game. Coleman Medal leader Jeremy Cameron had four goals to his name by half-time, with a sublime drop punt from a tight angle the highlight of the match, and added a fifth late in the final term. But Cameron was far from the only threat in Geelong's forward half, with Shaun Mannagh kicking three goals from his 24 disposals, and Tyson Stengle, Patrick Dangerfield and Jack Martin each grabbing two. St Kilda has now lost six games in a row, with their most recent win coming against Melbourne in Round 12 before the Saints' mid-season bye. Geelong looks well-placed to finish in the top four for the sixth time in the past seven seasons, with just five home-and-away games left. The Cats have notched 12 wins and are likely to start favourites in their remaining games against North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, Essendon, Sydney and Richmond, all of whom sit in the bottom half of the ladder.
ABC News
10-07-2025
- Sport
- ABC News
Why the Cats are in the hunt for the AFL flag in the 2025 season
The ordinary cycle of football teams sees them rise and fall in fortune, stopping at different rungs on the ladder. Since Chris Scott took over as Geelong coach, the lower rungs have been almost ignored in total. It's a run that's rarely been approached in the history of the league. Under Scott, finals have been an almost certainty for the Cats. Last week, Scott — a two-time premiership coach — marked his 350th match in charge of the club, with 237 of those ending in victory. For Scott, the milestone itself was less important than the connections he has made along the way. "It's nice. It's not my thing really," Scott told reporters. "I guess it's a nice acknowledgement that I've been around, and I really do appreciate the support of not just the Geelong footy club, but the Geelong people." Geelong sits poised to play a major role in the premiership race yet again. Its march back up the ladder has been driven not only by stars, both young and old, but also the chameleon-like techniques of the man in charge of the whiteboard. Like he tends to do, Scott has shifted the way the Cats play in 2025 to be different from the 2022 premiership side. While the premiership cup might not sit at Kardina Park right now, the Cats will likely have a large say in who takes it home in September. Media commentators, ex-players and fans have long acclaimed Scott as a tactical mastermind. His name often comes up when the most strategic coaches of the modern era are discussed. But Scott himself is usually reluctant to discuss his actual on-field strategy. When ABC Sport tried to ask about his approach after Geelong's loss to Brisbane two weeks ago, Scott was clear about his secrecy. "In terms of the way we try to play … I don't talk about our tactics that much or the way we play," Scott said. "Other coaches do, but I prefer to keep those things a little bit more to myself." Other coaches have been a little more forthcoming about some of the challenges in facing the Cats. "They are certainly a team that can shift the ball, they're also a very powerful go-forward team with speed, so you know they can do it multiple ways," Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin said after his side's round-four loss to Geelong earlier this year. This malleability is at the heart of the Cats' success this year. They switch up the speed at which they move the ball on a week-to-week basis as much as any other team. The Cats can shift modes with ease and possess several core elements designed to put opposition sides off their game. Against the Demons, they racked up 165 marks, with 148 of them uncontested. When they faced Adelaide the next week, the Cats only took 73 marks total. Both matches ended in Geelong wins. There are too many moving parts in the modern game to break down all the elements, and too many small parts that impact the wider game. Instead, it's worthwhile focusing on a couple of the more important parts. Despite Scott's stonewalling around tactics, he sometimes reveals a little behind the curtain. In round nine, Geelong started the match with Coleman Medal leader Jeremy Cameron in the centre square. "We started Smith out on the wing, Cameron in [the centre bounce]," Scott said. "I'm not saying it shouldn't have been Cameron in because that was, you know, that was one of those things where I thought it was a very high probability of it working." That assessment of potential success is telling. Cameron has been thrust into the middle before, but perhaps not in as prominent a role. Geelong also famously relied on a two-ruck approach at centre bounces in its charge to the 2022 flag, with the roles of Mark Blicavs and Rhys Stanley creating mismatches for opposition sides. Playing the percentages — and understanding when the percentages change — is a key to the success of the Cats in recent years. That first passage of play in the game saw Cameron matched up with Finn Callaghan, before the Giants switched the smaller Lachie Ash onto him. That's the sort of match-up Scott would want for his talisman. While the centre-square experiment didn't ultimately work for Cameron and the Cats, it did point to another clear difference to how the team sets up. Tall forwards sometimes lurk higher up the ground, but often as an outlet for packs and taking contested marks. Not Cameron. Of his 25 marks taken beyond halfway, all of them are uncontested. He doesn't spoil much either, with his 0.4 spoils per match the lowest for any of the top 20 goal-kicking key forwards this year. Instead, Geelong uses Cameron as a link option up the ground, testing whichever opponent is unlucky enough to be tasked to run near him. Cameron's forays up ground force defences into a conundrum — either switching and giving up a size differential, or moving a key defender away from the back half and making cover defence harder. There's no right answer and whatever is chosen can shift the opposition side out of shape. Cameron isn't the only tall that Scott uses higher up the ground. Both Shannon Neale and Oliver Henry loiter very high for traditional tall forwards, often creating mismatches or exceptional amounts of space for their other forwards inside 50. All three are good ball users to boot. Tellingly — although the Cats are first for marks inside 50 — they have only one individual player inside the top 20 (Cameron). Against sides with weaker tall defenders, the Cats' talls tend to sit deeper, and against stronger defences, they try to create more mismatches. It's a predictably unpredictable approach. This approach resembles Brisbane's recent forward set-ups, which is a clear nod to the influence of the reigning premiers. It isn't the only way that the Cats have seemingly shifted their core philosophy towards the Lions. As alluded to above, not everything shifts on a week-to-week basis. There are some facets of their game that seem present from week-to-week that have helped to shape the identity of this version of the Cats. Most prominently, this includes their devotion to using the ball by foot. The Cats have the biggest share of kicks as a share of total disposals so far this year. In a related measure, they also have the second most marks of any side. The only side with more marks is Brisbane. There's one area that this use by foot stands out in particular: at the coalface. The Cats generate the second most ruck contests per game this year (behind the Suns), and have the second-best scoring differential from stoppage (behind the Bulldogs). This has been a focus of their game. The first disposal from stoppage is often hard to get away, with space at a premium. This year the Cats have been the side to utilise the kick immediately from non-centre bounce stoppages more than any other. At the same time, they force opposition sides to handball. This is a clear sign of the priority that territory plays in the current Geelong system. A clean kick is better than a clean handball, and a messy kick better than a messy handball. Geelong looks to position effectively at the second contest to make best use of quick kicks and half-chances. The Cats' defensive set-ups around the contest have long been the envy of the league and at post-bounce stoppages they often draw in extra defensive-minded players around the clinches. Instead of a heavy ball-winning focus, they prioritise quality exits and opportunities forward. Players like Tom Atkins and Mark O'Connor are critical to this balance. It allows them to deploy Max Holmes and Bailey Smith in more attacking roles with a freer licence. When they lose the clearance, the Cats' deeper defence is still holding up relatively well. Despite the Cats' outstanding knack in winning games through the season under Scott, some have criticised the Cats' ability to win finals under his reign. While Scott has the biggest differential between home-and-away and finals' win percentage, a slide is not uncommon. Jock McHale — the most decorated pre-World War II coach — had a similar finals' win percentage but seven flags to his name. As the competition becomes increasingly even across the board, winning finals and flags is a tougher exercise than ever before. Seven of the eight teams who enter finals leave after a loss. Margins are tight. "I think it's been harder in the last few years than it's ever been," Scott said last week. "So there's a couple of things there. You need a bit of luck. Like the team that wins it always gets a bit of luck. "It's true that the best team generally wins, but not many teams win it when a whole lot of things go wrong. It's so hard to plan for all of that bad luck, but you can a little bit." There's a couple of schools of thought around the best set-up for a side to win in the AFL finals. Some see a flexible approach ideal, as counters to the opposition can come through as sides progress through. Others prefer a more rigid approach that relies upon a relatively set game plan to overcome all others. Scott will be banking on that flexibility — and playing the percentages — to drive the Cats to yet another flag and the rest of the competition to the drawing board.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Former NFL Player Chris Scott Texted All His Friends About His Prostate Cancer Diagnosis, Inspired by His 'Prayer Warrior' Wife Debra
Chris Scott, a onetime player for the Indianapolis Colts, realized more people than he knew had also faced prostate cancer He wants to draw attention to the health issue to encourage others to get screened His wife Debra has helped him as a caregiver and "prayer warrior"When retired NFL player Chris Scott was diagnosed with prostate cancer, his wife called everyone they knew and asked them to start praying. "My wife, she's a prayer warrior," says Chris Scott, 63, of Berea, Ohio. "She called everybody." His wife's outreach inspired him to also start texting his own friends, and he was surprised to hear that many of them, too, had fought prostate cancer. Now Scott shares his story to encourage other men to talk about prostate cancer, and to encourage one another to be proactive in their health and get their PSA checked. Chris Scott was a defensive end who played at Purdue, before playing three seasons with the Indianapolis Colts. A knee injury forced him to retire. He and his now-wife Debra Scott, 61, a retired day care worker, met at Bible study; she was a 26-year-old single mom, and he was a 28-year-old single dad. They became very close friends. He opened her fridge one day and saw it was empty, so he went to the grocery store and fully stocked her refrigerator and freezer. When he noticed she was cold, he bought her a warm winter coat. 'Chris is a very generous man,' she says. 'Chris always has protected me, always. He has shielded me from so many things that I would've had to deal with myself, but I didn't have to. He's just really a good husband and a great father." He still puts gasoline in her car. The couple are very active in their church and constantly together. "People say it all the time. If I see Chris, I see Debra right behind him," she says. In 2019, Chris had a comprehensive health exam at the Cleveland Clinic via The Trust, a program for former professional football players which provides access to the the Cleveland Clinic's executive health program. Every five years, Chris spends three days and two nights having a series of health tests. He weighed 365 pounds and doctors told him he needed to lose weight. They were "very concerned" about high blood pressure and heart disease, Chris says. Three years later, in 2022, he ran into a friend he played high school football with. 'He was all lean and mean, I said, 'Man, what did you do?'' His friend shared the details of his keto diet, and so Chris and his wife Debra went on the keto diet together. 'I said, 'Okay, I'll do it with you,'' she says. 'We do everything together.' They cut down their sugar, and threw away the pasta in their pantry. When Chris Scott returned to the Cleveland Clinic in January 2024 for his scheduled testing, he had lost 50 pounds, which "made all of the difference as far as [my] health is concerned,' he says. Though most of hs numbers looked so much better, he recalled, they were concerned about Chris's PSA levels. They made a urologist appointment for him that week, where they did a biopsy. The next day, the doctor told him all 12 samples had cancer. 'It felt like a death sentence,' Chris says. Chris's father had died of prostate cancer. 'I was anxious and very nervous,' Debra says. 'I just saw death. I said, 'Oh he's dying. He's going to die.' " Urologist Dr. Urma Lengu assured Debra that wasn't going to happen. 'She was an amazing woman,' Debra says. 'She says 'Mrs. Scott, this is not a death sentence. It will be okay.'' When they left her office, Debra first called her older sister, whose husband survived prostate cancer, with the same treatment Chris' doctor was recommending, and who helped Debra think positively. Her sister "was that quiet person in the storm" Debra says. Then she called everyone else she knew and asked them to pray. 'It helped me,' Chris says — because after his wife told her friends, he started telling his. He texted his friends on his Purdue Football Player Alumni text chain, and other players reached out and told them they also had prostate cancer and they shared their stories and helped him make decisions and research his doctors. He had surgery to remove his prostate on April 11, 2024. 'I was on pins and needles the whole time,' Debra says. 'My faith is strong, but when you're not praying for another person, you're praying for your own life, it looks a little different.' Doctors determined his prostate cancer was Stage 3. After the surgery, he was in recovery. But then Debra received a text that he was moved to the ICU. Because of his sleep apnea, he was having trouble coming out of anesthesia. When she reached his hospital room he was gasping for air. "He got scared. So he panicked. When I got into the room, this big man of mine, this 6'5", over 200-lb. football player of mine is in tears and stretching his hand out for me saying, 'Please just come hug me and pray with me,' I lose it. ... [but] I had to stay really calm. By the time I left, he was relaxed.' The couple says they are 'thankful' and 'so grateful" for what has come since. 'He was able to just get the right timing for every doctor. Everything went the right way for us to be able him to come out cancer free,' Debra says. Chris now tells all the men in his life, including his 40-year-old son, to check their PSA levels. Even his own father didn't talk about his prostate cancer. Chris says he read about it on his father's death certificate. 'Men keep everything a secret," he says. "My dad never told us he had prostate cancer, he kept it to himself." Chris now tells all the men in his life, including his 40-year-old son, to check their PSA levels. 'When I started talking about my prostate cancer, it seemed like every man out of the woodwork started talking about it. I had to be the voice to say something.' Debra spent her career caring for others, but being her husband's caregiver was difficult. She took time off from her part-time job at the Hallmark store to care for her husband, and it was an adjustment for both of them. 'I knew that it would be a journey for the both of us because he resorts to [acting like a] small child and I had to actually just get over it,' Debra says. 'It stretched our marriage vows big time because he was just so irritable.' His pain made it difficult for him to receive her help. 'He was very uncomfortable, very not a happy person,' she remembers, but she reminded herself 'he's on the other side of this.' And while she did focus on her gratitude for his health, she had to ask him to be considerate of her feelings while he healed. 'I had to tell him, 'Listen, I know you're unhappy right now and I know you're not comfortable, but you have to be nicer to me and you have to speak to me with some level of intimacy or be empathetic towards me because I'm the only one here.' Debra worked in daycares for 28 years," so to her, "diapers are no big thing,' she says. But catheters, sometimes with blood in them, was different. 'That was the worst,' she says. 'It was gross. This is above diaper changing. This was just my husband in pain. If I would touch around the area where the catheter was at, he would just explode." When it was removed after a few weeks, "he was just a better guy,' she says. His appetite returned — she made him omelettes and Jell-O —and he was able to start walking. And his positive attitude returned too. 'He's not over here worrying about the next step. That's why our marriage is so good, because he's such a positive man," Debra says. "I mean, I would've been on the floor with all this, but he just constantly reassured me that every step was getting better.' His previous weight loss helped his recovery, he says: "It gave me that endurance." He was much better within two or three months. Now he's a certified personal trainer. He teaches seniors chair exercise classes at their church. His wife makes everyone lunch. They also run the non-profit Chris founded, Boys 2 Men, together, and finally took the road trip Debra dreamed of in now advocating for all his friends to get their PSA levels checked and try to catch prostate cancer as early as possible. 'He showed a lot of other men, it's okay to talk about your cancer,' Debra says. 'A lot of men suffer in silence and they don't have to,' Chris says. Read the original article on People
The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Carlton plays fans for mugs by masking woes with corporate claptrap
'If you start listening to the fans,' Wayne Bennett once said, 'it won't be long before you're sitting next to them.' Indeed, if you're running a high-profile sporting organisation, it usually pays to block out the noise. If Brendon Gale had heeded the advice of Richmond Twitter following their three elimination final losses, the club would be in ashes. There's no way Chris Scott would be coaching Geelong today if the club had acted on the criticism of him following the 2019 and 2021 preliminary finals. But there's a fine line between not listening to the fans and playing them for mugs. So much of the messaging coming out of Carlton right now makes a mockery of what the supporters can clearly see and what the club continues to mask with corporate claptrap. For a start, the fans deserve much better than what the general manager of football, Brad Lloyd, has served up in the last fortnight. Following the North Melbourne loss, he gave 10 minutes of banalities – 'Vossy's a wonderful person, he's working hard, everyone's working hard' – none of which is in dispute. Last Saturday, he was rattling off phrases like 'strong connections', 'strong feedback' and 'safe environments', the sort of language best reserved for the annual report, not for placating angry supporters. The coach is more of a straight talker but what he's saying doesn't marry up with what we're seeing. His press conferences have been a mix of LinkedIn jargon and Champion Data cherrypicking. He insists their numbers are good and says their contested game is the envy of the competition. In many ways, Michael Voss is to be admired for the way he has conducted himself this year. It takes an abnormally even temperament to front the media after losses like those against Richmond, North Melbourne and Port Adelaide and still manage to find positives. As senior coach, he has to be the last to yield. What's he supposed to do, shrug his shoulders and say his team's no good? No, he's going to keep fighting until they drag him out of there on a trestle table. But resilience can sometimes stray into delusion, into obstinance and into job preservation. There's a reluctance to deviate from being a 'contest and clearance team', and a refusal to accept that the one-dimensional gameplan has worn the senior players down and set them up to fail. The Carlton fanbase is incredibly frustrated. They sat through the worst of the Malthouse and Bolton era. They watched a 16-man GWS beat them at the Docklands – as low a day as the club's ever had. They watched Port Adelaide put 19 goals in a row on them in 2021. They were there for the 'Collingwood have closed like the Grim Reaper' game. They've seen this team built brick by brick, high draft pick by high draft pick. They've been assured by the club and the wider commentariat that all the pieces were in place, and that their time was now. And then, this. All that for this. They've heard many journalists, pokie grubs and bitter former coaches blame the senior players. Some are even pointing the finger at the captain, a player who's shouldered more responsibility than any footballer I've ever seen, a player who's wheeled out like a factional hack every time the team plateaus. They've seen the footy media give the senior coach an incredibly soft ride, the sort of luxury afforded to a coach with an 'aura'. Blame it on the sins of Carlton past. But it means there's a kind of overcompensation of caution, a reluctance for the club and the media to acknowledge what's really at play here – that the Carlton coaching panel has not demonstrated it has the tactical acumen to compete with the top teams, to confound opposition coaches, to change within seasons, and to implement a gameplan that brings out the best in its players. They can talk 'alignment' and 'values' and 'contest and clearance' until they're blue in the face. Facts trump waffle. The facts are this team has won eight of its past 24 games. It's beaten one top eight team in that period. Its players are tired, hesitant, slow, terrified of making mistakes and wedded to an obsolete gameplan. Its leaders are like Leslie Nielsen in front of the exploding fireworks factory. Ignore the performative talkback tantrums, the graffiti, the exhortations for greater effort, the calls to trade Cripps. Most sane and sober Carlton fans think major change is warranted, including the senior coach. This might be one of those rare occasions where it pays to listen to them. This is just the sixth time a round of matches has been split down the middle in this way since GWS Giants joined the competition in 2012. When Leigh Matthews unexpectedly resigned as Brisbane senior coach in 2008, Voss was thrust into the hot seat. His first year was a good one, and with the prime minister watching on, they met Carlton in an elimination final. Both clubs were far from their peak but there were some champions running around that night, including Chris Judd, Jonathan Brown and Simon Black. Brown played with a fractured eye socket, but still managed four goals. Daniel Bradshaw kicked the final two goals of the game to sink the Blues. Kevin Rudd, who was running the country on about two hours of sleep a night at that point, and who had hitherto shown no interest in football, was perhaps the most animated he'd been in his entire time in office. Brisbane traded heavily and disastrously the following season, picking up Brendan Fevola, whose life was in disarray at that stage. They won their first four games, but fell in a heap thereafter. Voss was sacked in 2013, despite winning five of his last seven games, including one of the most extraordinary comebacks in the history of the game against Geelong. The midfielder will be remembered for his match-winning goal in the 2018 grand final against Collingwood, as he retires after 165 matches. Sheed was overlooked by the Magpies in the 2013 draft but joined the Eagles with the next pick. 'The privilege of being at a big club is that you're relevant, there's people who talk about our club a lot, and I think you can't hide from that,' Carlton's Harry McKay told AFL 360. 'And when a big club isn't playing great footy, that's kind of expected. '[It] doesn't change too much what we do day to day … We talk about what we can control and what we value inside the four walls, and if we were riding the rollercoaster of narratives every week, then it's a tough way to go about it.' Sign up to From the Pocket: AFL Weekly Jonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week's biggest AFL stories after newsletter promotion McKay, who is out injured, said he was finding navigating Carlton's troubles this year even more disappointing because of how stable things felt inside the club compared to some of the other rough periods he'd experience in his 10 years at the club. Any thoughts you want to share? Reply to this email or send your views to fromthepocket@ Which two clubs launched the 1985 season with a Friday night game at the MCG? Answers in next week's newsletter, but if you think you know it, hit reply and let me know. Last week's answer: Which club has the most players aged 30 or older on their current playing list? Collingwood with 11 players. Congratulations to Elizabeth F, who was first to reply with the right answer. Tom Lynch has a role to play in Richmond's rebuild but he failed as a leader with his meltdown against Adelaide. From Glory and Fury to Devils and Dolphins: the trend for unorthodox Australian sporting nicknames has come full circle, writes Jack Snape. Reply to this email and drop me a line, or email fromthepocket@ Have a friend who might? Forward this to them, or tell them how to get it.
The Herald Scotland
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Scottish Government plugs book festival Baillie Gifford gap
The deal, which will help reduce the cost of school trips to the festival, was signed off by ministers several months ago but has not been previously announced. Read more: It is part of an enhanced package of support for the event, which has seen its government funding more than doubled in the space of 12 months, to a record £820,000. A further £160,000 increase planned for the next financial year is expected to see the festival's government funding rise by more than £1.5m by 2027-2028 compared to the last three years of Baillie Gifford's involvement with the event, which it supported through its schools and children's programme. The Edinburgh International Book Festival has an extensive programme of events for children and school pupils. (Image: Aly Wight/Edinburgh International Book Festival) Although the EIBF has this year introduced a £4 ticket per pupil charge for events in its schools programme, which were previously free of charge, the new support is expected to help more schools meet the costs of getting to and from the festival. Teachers and librarians can also apply for free tickets for pupils who would otherwise miss out. The Edinburgh International Book Festival is now based at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. (Image: Chris Scott) The plug was pulled on the Edinburgh-based finance firm's involvement in the book festival last spring after the escalation of a campaign triggered the previous summer over its links with the fossil fuel industry. Climate activist Greta Thunberg pulled out of a sold-out appearance at the 2023 festival, protesters staged a walk-out from an event and 50 writers threatened to boycott the EIBF in future if it did not sever its links with Baillie Gifford. The Fossil Free Books campaign went on to target book festivals across Britain, including the Edinburgh event, last May by demanding that they sever all links with Baillie Gifford due to its involvement in the coal, oil and gas sectors. Hundreds of writers backed an open letter warning festivals to 'expect escalation, including the expansion of boycotts, increased author withdrawal of labour, and increased disruption.' Announcing the ending of the partnership with Baillie Gifford just two weeks after the open letter was published, the Edinburgh book festival said its ability to deliver a safe and successful event had been 'severely compromised.' At the time, EIBF director Jenny Niven said: 'It will be infinitely harder to build and sustain well-funded cultural institutions in the future than it is to put them out of business today." Allan Little, the then book festival chair, said: 'Without the support of our partners and donors, the future of festivals like is in jeopardy.' First Minister John Swinney later accused campaigners against Baillie Gifford's sponsorship of jeopardising cultural events and of running a 'misplaced' campaign against the company. A number of leading Scottish writers, including Alexander McCall Smith, Andrew O'Hagan, Chris Brookmyre, Denise Mina, Doug Johnstone, David Greig, Liz Lochhead and Val McDermid, backed a separate open letter describing the targeting of book festivals as 'deeply retrograde' and 'ill thought-out.' Many of the writers who backed the Fossil Free Books campaign are taking part in this year's Edinburgh book festival, including Ali Smith, Hannah Lavery, Jess Brough, Raymond Antrobus, Chitra Ramaswamy, Andrés N Ordorica, Harry Josephine Giles and Katie Goh. The bulk of the government's support for the Edinburgh book festival comes via its arts agency Creative Scotland. A new deal confirmed in January saw the event's core funding increase from £919,000 over the last three years to £1.88m over the next three. As well as the £300,000 ringfenced for the festival's schools programme over the next three years, the EIBF has also seen its annual support from the government's Festival Expo Fund doubled, to £200,000, after ministers agreed to boost support for events in Edinburgh and Glasgow by £1.1m. The newly-announced support for the book festival has emerged after the government agreed to invest an additional £4 million in cultural events across Scotland in this financial year. It announced one-off support to the tune of £300,000 for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society in March. Ms Niven, who is overseeing her second festival as director, said: "The work the book festival does for children and young people is a cornerstone of what we do. "Publishing for children and young people has never been more vibrant, and the benefits of reading never better evidenced. "The festival is perfectly positioned to help children engage with the amazing range and breadth of stories around them, to support teachers to use books imaginatively and creatively in learning, and to supply older kids with the tools to think critically, and learn to evaluate the deluge of info around them. "This aspect of what we do is vital, and we're delighted to have specific public funding support to develop this work further in the coming years. 'We've identified the cost of transport as a key barrier to a wider cohort of schools joining us in August, and are committed to maintaining free access for as many children as possible. "We're delighted that the Scottish Government's increased support for festivals has delivered public funding to develop this work further in the coming years. We look forward to widening our reach across Scotland and exploring further the digital potential of what we do.' Richard Lochhead, the government's minister for business and employment, said: "The Edinburgh International Book Festival is one the country's most significant cultural institutions. "Its schools programme has been crucial in fostering literacy and cultural engagement among young people, with thousands of pupils benefiting annually from free events and resources. 'This funding secures those benefits for young readers across Edinburgh, helping schools that might otherwise struggle with travel costs, and ensuring they have the same opportunity to take part in one of the world's leading literary festivals.'
