(prior to adopting rugby and becoming defunct). This club was known to have initially played with a rule to bounce the ball every 4 yards. This was a time when the football codes were still being established and regularly exchanged rules and ideas around the world. According to some, it may have come from a Victorian club as at least one was known to have had a bouncing rule. Chairman of the rules committee H. C. A. Harrison included the bounce into the standardised set of rules in 1866 as rule 6. "Ball must be bounced every 10 or 20 yards if carried" in order to pacify Geelong. Though it is not known whether the distance was a compromise between the two clubs, it is known that Melbourne players preferred to run farther and Melbourne asked Geelong to ratify the rule before distributing which likely indicates that differed slightly from Geelong's request. Other than that Geelong had instituted this rule in the early 1860s it is not known how long the club had this rule or whether this is an unaltered version of the original rule, however historian Graeme Atkinson considers it likely that Geelong's rules were drawn up prior to the first rules of the Melbourne Football Club which were drafted on 17 May 1859. Rules allegedly used by the Geelong Football Club in 1859 were originally written down by hand. A reprint of what were believed in 1923 to have been the Geelong's eleven 1859 rules appeared in the Geelong Advertiser courtesy of Fred Blackham from an old folded card, which appeared to differ only slightly from Melbourne Football Club's rules and do not mention a requirement to bounce the ball. The Geelong Advertiser appears to indicate that Geelong had Saturday football teams which regularly "hacked shins" in March and April prior to the formation of the Melbourne Football Club and that the formation of the Melbourne FC spurred Geelong to incorporate its club. Regarded as "the first distinctively Victorian rule" in the Australian code, the running bounce was first trialed in 1865 and formalised on 8 May 1866 by a committee of Victorian club delegates chaired by Harrison as a way to slow down the player in possession of the ball and to create more opportunities for a turn over, thus helping to increase the number of disposals and encourage more dynamic team play. Harrison himself was