Geelong’s newspaper and its football club have been linked from day one.

It was in the pages of the Geelong Advertiser on July 16, 1859, that a modest advertisement called for the first meeting to form a Geelong football club.

“Football — Admirers of the above game are requested to attend a meeting to be held at the Victoria Hotel, at half-past seven, on Monday evening, 18th July,” it read.

media_camera An ad calling to form the Geelong Football Club was published in the Geelong Advertiser on July 16, 1859.

media_camera A sketch from an early Geelong v Melbourne match.

media_camera The club’s end-of-season trip to the Otways in 1886.

media_camera The 1952 Geelong Football Club team included stars such as Bob Davis, Bernie Smith, Fred Flanagan, Neil Trezise and Ron Hovey.

media_camera A historic Football Record from the 1952 Grand Final. Courtesy of: Bob Gartland Collection. media_camera A 1999 Sheb cartoon depicting the “Two Big F’s” putting Geelong on the map: football and Fords.

It was signed by secretary A.M. Mason, squeezed between an ad for a bazaar to raise funds for a Gheringhap St presbyterian church that December and a notice for the half-yearly ordinary general meeting of shareholders of the Geelong Gas Company.

Little more than three lines that would eternally link two of the city’s most prominent entities.

From that meeting one Monday night on the corner of Moorabool and Malop streets, the fortunes of that football club have been lived out and recorded through the pages of the Advertiser for more than 150 years.

Notable eras include the days of complete domination, when the team of the 1870s changed the way the game was played and established arguably the most successful era the game has ever seen, and the lows of two world wars.

Then came the premiership era and the heroes that live on from the early 1950s and early ‘60s, and after that, the flamboyance and heartbreak of the early ‘90s, and the powerful force of the team of recent times.

It is a club that has produced some of the game’s all-time greats. Some of the most influential figures both on and off the field.

People who changed the game, shaped the game, made the game the true national football code it is today.

— For more on the past and present Cats greats, check out the Our Geelong magazine in Monday’s Geelong Advertiser, which celebrates the newspaper’s 175th anniversary.

NOV 22: Bushrangers, manhunts and murder

NOV 23: Cats greats and premiership heroes

NOV 24: Geelong at war

NOV 25: How the city evolved

NOV 26: People who shaped Geelong

NOV 27: Nature’s fury hits home

NOV 28: Our sporting stars

NOV 30: City’s pillars of industry

DEC 1: The scandals that shocked

DEC 2: Medical marvels and schools of thought

DEC 3: Rails, sails and wheels of progress

DEC 4: Surf, sand and shipwrecks