Football Throw-In Rules: Foul Throws and the Countdown

Two metres. That is the distance a marker must give a player taking a throw-in, and it is the smallest distance from the ball that the Laws of the Game demand of opponents at any restart. Everything else about the throw is equally precise, which is why foul throws are given as often as they are.

The football throw in rules fit in one sentence. At the moment of delivery the thrower must face the field, have part of each foot either on the touchline or on the ground outside it, and throw the ball with both hands from behind and over the head, from the point where it left the field. Get any of that wrong and the throw passes to the other team. There is no free kick and no card for a foul throw. From the 2026-27 season a throw-in that a referee judges is being delayed gets a visible five-second countdown, after which it goes to the opposition. The rules are Law 15 of the Laws of the Game, set by the International Football Association Board and applied in England by the FA at every level, from the Premier League to the parks.

The correct throw-in, condition by condition

Law 15 does not describe a technique. It lists conditions that must be true at one instant, the moment the ball is delivered. Before that instant the thrower can do what he likes, run up, shuffle, wipe the ball on his shirt. After it, nothing he does with his feet matters.

Condition	What the Law requires	What it does not require
Facing	The thrower stands facing the field of play	Square to the touchline; a throw down the line at an angle is fine
Feet	Part of each foot on the touchline or on the ground outside it	Both feet behind the line, or feet together
Hands	Both hands on the ball as it is thrown	Equal force from each hand
Delivery	From behind and over the head	Any particular height or arc
Place	Where the ball left the field	The exact blade of grass; referees allow a little

Most of the arguments come from what people believe the Law says rather than what it does say. Nothing requires the thrower to keep the ball in two hands until it leaves the head, to throw it in a particular direction, or to stand still. A run-up is legal. A forward somersault is legal, which is how a handful of players have managed throws that land in the six-yard box, provided the feet are on the ground when the ball goes. A throw that travels backwards, towards the thrower's own goal, is legal too; "facing the field" means the thrower's body faces the pitch, not that the ball must go forwards.

The two players who share the touchline

The other team has a part to play. Opponents must stand at least two metres from the point on the touchline where the throw is taken. The thrower's own team-mates can stand anywhere, including right on the line next to him. That difference is the basis of most throw-in routines: a team-mate shows short, the marker cannot crowd him within two metres of the thrower, and the ball comes back.

The ball is in play once it enters the field. Until then it is not in play, which is why a thrower who drops it on the touchline and picks it up again has not committed an offence.

Five ways a throw becomes foul

Referees and assistants learn foul throws as a checklist. There are five ways to fail it, and each one maps to a clause of Law 15.

A lifted foot

Both feet must be in contact with the ground, on or behind the line, when the ball is released. Players who throw with a long run often drag the back foot along the grass, and that is fine; the toe is still in contact. What is foul is the back foot coming off the ground entirely as the arms come forward, a little hop that turns the throw into a jump. It is common among youngsters trying to get distance and among adults trying to get it quickly.

A foot wholly on the pitch

Part of each foot must be on the line or outside it. A foot planted entirely inside the field, with no part of it touching the white paint, is a foul throw. The front foot is the usual culprit, because throwers step into the throw.

One hand doing the work

The ball must be thrown with both hands. A throw where one hand flicks the ball and the other trails along behind it is foul. So is a throw where the ball spins off one hand because the thrower has turned his shoulders to get extra length. Referees look at the ball's flight as much as at the hands: a throw that curls sharply in one direction usually came off one hand.

Not from behind and over the head

The ball must start behind the head and be delivered over it. A throw that begins at chest height and is pushed forward like a basketball pass is foul. So is the "dropped" throw where the thrower brings the ball over the head and lets it fall out of the hands in front of the face without any throwing action. It is a common fault among beginners and is seldom seen in the professional game, partly because elite throwers have been coached out of it and partly because it is hard to judge from thirty yards.

The wrong place

The throw must be taken from where the ball left the field. A throw taken from the wrong place is foul, and the throw goes to the other side. In practice the referee is concerned with players who take the ball several metres up the line to gain ground, which is dealt with below.

1. 1PlaceIs the ball being thrown from where it went out, or from a few metres further up the line?
2. 2FeetIs part of each foot on the line or outside it, and are both feet still on the ground?
3. 3HandsAre both hands on the ball as it is released?
4. 4DeliveryDoes the ball come from behind the head and over it?
5. 5EntryHas the ball entered the field of play? If not, the throw is taken again by the same team.

The order in which officials typically watch a throw under Law 15. Any failure gives the throw to the opponents.

What a foul throw costs: possession and nothing more

A foul throw is a strange offence in that the Laws treat it as a mistake rather than misconduct. The consequence is set out in one line of Law 15: if the throw-in is not taken correctly, it is retaken by the opposing team.

That is all. No free kick, no caution, no second attempt for an adult side. The opposition simply take the throw from the same spot. Supporters sometimes demand a booking for a foul throw that was flagrantly wrong, but there is no provision for one, and a referee who showed a card for it would be making a mistake of his own.

Can advantage be played?

Yes, since the 2026-27 edition of the Laws. The Board amended the advantage clause in Law 5 to say that the referee may allow play to continue when a restart is incorrectly taken and the ball is in play, if the opposing team will benefit, and its explanation names the throw-in as an example. So a foul throw that lands at an opponent's feet in a promising position can be left to run; if the expected advantage does not follow within a few seconds, the referee goes back and gives the throw to the opponents. Before that amendment the Law spoke of advantage only for offences, and referees who let play run after a badly taken throw were using common sense rather than a written power. The advantage principle and where it does and does not apply are explained in our guide to the advantage rule in football.

The foul throw that was really delay

A card can still follow a throw-in, but only for delay. Referees must caution players who excessively delay the restart of play, and a thrower who wastes time is dealt with under that heading, not for his technique. The 2026-27 Laws changed the order of things. A team slowing down its own throw now faces the five-second countdown described below, and loses the throw if it runs out; the Law says the offending player is cautioned only if he then excessively delays the restart after the throw has been given to the opponents. The Board's explanation is that losing the ball is punishment enough unless the delay is extreme.

The feet and the line: standing on it is legal

"Both feet behind the line" is probably the single most repeated myth in English football, and it is wrong. Every touchline in the country belongs to the field of play; a ball resting on the line is still in. And Law 15 says the thrower must have part of each foot on the touchline or on the ground outside it. The word "on" is the end of the argument.

So:

• a thrower standing with both feet entirely on the touchline is taking a legal throw;
• a thrower with both heels on the line and toes over it is taking a legal throw, because part of each foot is on the line;
• a thrower with one foot behind the line and the other with its heel on the line and toes on the grass is taking a legal throw;
• a thrower with one foot entirely on the grass, inside the line, has taken a foul throw.

Why the myth persists

Nobody can say for certain where the myth started. The likeliest explanation is caution: junior coaches tell children to stay behind the line because a thrower who does so can never be wrong, and the safe habit hardens into a rule in people's heads. Assistant referees in English football are taught the actual Law, and on a throw near them they watch the feet on the line, because the line is where the judgement lies.

The test is applied at the moment of delivery. A thrower can stand inside the field while picking up the ball and walking back; he only needs to be in a legal position when it leaves his hands. And once it has gone, a foot coming onto the pitch on the follow-through does not matter at all.

A side note for anyone who has played on an artificial pitch: the line on 3G surfaces is part of the carpet, painted or tufted in, and the same rule applies. On some grassroots pitches the line has faded to nothing by March, and referees fall back on where the line would have been.

Opponents, the two-metre gap and the marker who jumps about

The two-metre gap is a modern addition to an old Law. Without it, a marker could stand toe to toe with the thrower, and the only remedy was a caution for unsporting behaviour if the referee thought he was distracting. Two metres is not much, but it gives the thrower room to bring his arms over.

The full rule is that all opponents must stand at least two metres from the point on the touchline where the throw is taken. The distance is measured from the point of the throw, not from the thrower's body, and it applies in every direction, so an opponent standing two metres along the touchline is as far back as one standing two metres infield.

What a marker may and may not do

The marker may stand still, two metres away, with arms raised. He may move along the line to mirror the thrower's run-up. What he may not do is close the gap, or distract or impede the thrower unfairly. The Law names one example in its own text: moving closer than two metres to the place where the throw-in is to be taken counts as unfair distraction.

The sanction is a caution for unsporting behaviour. If the throw has already been taken when the referee deals with it, the throwing team is also given an indirect free kick, which is a better restart than the throw itself for any team near the opponents' area.

Throw-in2metres

Free kick9.15metres

Corner kick9.15metres

Kick-off9.15metres

Penalty kick, other players9.15metres

Minimum distances from the ball in Laws 8 and 13 to 17. The throw-in is the only restart where opponents may be this close. At a penalty, players other than the kicker and goalkeeper must be outside the area and 9.15 metres from the penalty mark.

Show the numbers

How far opponents must stand at each restart

Item	Value
Throw-in	2metres
Free kick	9.15metres
Corner kick	9.15metres
Kick-off	9.15metres
Penalty kick, other players	9.15metres

Jumping about on the line

The marker who leaps up and down in front of the thrower, waving his arms and shouting, is the commonest case. Jumping is not in itself unfair; a defender is entitled to try to block a throw. Waving arms in the thrower's face from closer than two metres, or shouting to distract, crosses the line. Referees in English football tend to warn first and book only if the marker carries on, but the Law permits the caution straight away.

What a throw-in cannot produce: no goal, no offside

A throw-in is the most limited restart in football. It cannot score a goal directly and it cannot produce offside.

No goal directly

If the ball is thrown straight into the opponents' goal without touching another player, the goal does not count and play restarts with a goal kick. If it is thrown straight into the thrower's own goal, play restarts with a corner kick. A touch by anyone, including a goalkeeper's fingertip, makes it a goal in the ordinary way, which is why long throwers like to aim at the goalkeeper's hands.

Outcome of the throw	Decision
Straight into the opponents' goal, no touch	Goal kick
Straight into the thrower's own goal, no touch	Corner kick to the opponents
Into the goal after touching any player	Goal stands
Goalkeeper of the throwing team handles it directly, inside his area	Indirect free kick to the opponents
Thrower plays it again before anyone else touches it	Indirect free kick, or direct if handled

No offside

Law 11 lists three restarts from which a player cannot be offside: a goal kick, a corner kick and a throw-in. An attacker can stand behind the last defender, receive a throw directly, and turn and score. This is why defenders mark tightly at throws in their own half and why a team defending a long throw keeps a man on the goalkeeper's line.

The exemption applies only to receiving the ball directly from the throw. Once another player has touched it, ordinary offside applies from that moment, so a flick-on from a long throw can find a team-mate in an offside position and be penalised. The flick-on is the second phase and the Law judges it fresh.

The exemption is what gives the long throw its tactical value in English football, where a few players have made a career of it. That story belongs to our guide to long throw-ins in football, which covers the technique and the history from Stoke City to the present.

The thrower's second touch and why the goalkeeper cannot pick it up

The thrower may not touch the ball again until another player has. If he does, the opponents get an indirect free kick from where it happened. A thrower who throws the ball against the back of a defender's legs, collects it himself and runs on has not touched it twice, because it touched the defender first. One who throws it short to himself, letting it bounce in front of him and then playing it, has.

If the second touch is with the hand, it is a handball offence and the free kick is direct. A thrower in his own penalty area who handles the ball after throwing it gives away a penalty.

The goalkeeper and a team-mate's throw

Since 1997 a goalkeeper may not handle the ball inside his own penalty area if he receives it directly from a throw-in taken by a team-mate. It is the same principle as the back-pass restriction, which stops a goalkeeper picking up a team-mate's deliberate kick, and it was added to close the obvious gap: a defending side under pressure could otherwise throw the ball to its goalkeeper and let him hold it. The goalkeeper can play the ball with his feet, head or chest, and can pick it up once an opponent has touched it. If he handles it directly from the throw, the opponents get an indirect free kick, and if that is inside his goal area it moves to the goal-area line. The full mechanics and history are in our guide to the back-pass rule in football.

Stolen yards and the five-second countdown from 2026-27

A throw-in is supposed to be taken from where the ball went out. Watch a team chasing a game and the thrower picks the ball up, walks five metres towards the opponents' goal, and throws. Referees in England have always allowed a little, a metre or two, on the grounds that the exact spot is impossible to pin down and nothing is gained. Five metres is another matter. The Laws do not set a tolerance in metres, and no referee will give one, but the principle is clear: a throw from the wrong place is a foul throw, and the throw passes to the opponents.

The assistant referee polices it. Assistants mark the spot with their own position and, if the thrower moves too far, will point him back. If he throws from the wrong place anyway, the assistant signals and the referee gives the throw the other way.

The time limit

Delay at throw-ins has been one of the game's chronic irritations. The thrower who wanders to the ball, dries it with a towel, looks for a team-mate, puts it down and picks it up again can take thirty seconds for a restart that should take five. Before 2026-27 the only remedy was a caution for delaying the restart, a sanction that gave the lost time back to nobody.

The 2026-27 edition of the Laws gave referees a new tool, modelled on the countdown introduced for goalkeepers a year earlier. Where a player is unfairly delaying his own team's throw-in, the referee whistles, signals for the throw to be taken and starts a five-second countdown, counted visibly with a raised hand. If the ball has not been thrown in when the count ends, the throw-in is awarded to the opposition. The same countdown applies to goal kicks, where the penalty is a corner kick.

• 2Minimum distance for opponents, metres
• 5Countdown on a delayed throw, seconds
• 2Hands required on the ball
• 1920Year offside at throw-ins was abolished

Fixed requirements under Law 15 and the 2026-27 time-wasting amendment. The five-second count starts only when the referee judges that a throw is being delayed.

The countdown does not start at every throw. It is a tool the referee uses when he decides a throw is being slowed down, and it carries no card unless the player goes on delaying the restart after the throw has been given to the other side. The design is better than the caution it replaced, because the punishment matches the offence: a team trying to keep the ball by wasting time at a throw loses the ball. The goalkeeper's version, on which this was modelled, is explained in our guide to the goalkeeper eight-second rule.

Who judges a throw: the flag for direction and the split of duties

On a professional pitch two officials watch a throw. In a park match it is usually one.

Direction

When the ball crosses the touchline on the assistant's side, the assistant raises the flag to show it is out and then points it diagonally upwards in the direction the team awarded the throw is attacking. If the decision is obvious, assistants may give the direction directly. If it is not, they may look to the referee, who has the final word, and many referees in England agree a simple convention before kick-off: when the assistant cannot tell, he holds the flag straight up and waits for the referee's signal. Each assistant patrols one half of one touchline, so on the stretches no assistant covers, the referee judges the throw alone.

Feet and hands

Officials split the watching. The assistant, standing on the touchline level with the thrower, has the best view of the feet and is expected to signal a foul throw involving the feet or the place. The referee, facing the thrower from inside the field, sees the hands and the delivery, and judges whether the ball came from behind and over the head. When the assistant sees a foul throw, he signals it with the flag and shows the throw going the other way, and the referee confirms the decision.

None of this applies in most grassroots football in England, where there are no assistants, or club linesmen whose only job is to say when the ball is out. There the referee watches everything from wherever he happens to be, and foul throws on the far touchline are judged largely on the flight of the ball. The training that goes into an official's positioning is described in our guide to becoming a football referee in England.

Can VAR look at a throw-in?

Only indirectly. In the attacking phase that leads to a goal or a penalty, the VAR can check whether the ball had gone out of play. Which team was awarded a throw-in, and whether a throw was taken correctly, are not reviewable decisions, so a throw given the wrong way in the build-up to a goal stands.

Edge cases the throw-in rules answer

Law 15 is short, but it covers a surprising number of odd situations, and the Board's annual circulars have filled in most of the rest.

The ball that never enters the field

A throw that drops on the touchline outside the field, or that the thrower lets slip so it rolls along behind the line, has not entered the field of play. It is retaken by the same team from the same spot. This is the throw that bounces before crossing the line: if the ball touches the ground before it enters the field, the throw is taken again by the same team. It is not a foul throw, because the conditions of a correct throw may all have been met; the ball simply has not gone into play.

The throw that curls out again

A long throw that enters the field in the air and then curls back over the touchline without touching anyone was in play. It went out, and the throw passes to the other team in the ordinary way. The Laws judge whether the ball entered the field, not whether it stayed there.

The throw played off an opponent's back

A thrower is allowed to throw the ball deliberately at an opponent, as long as the throw is not careless, reckless or made with excessive force. If he throws it against a defender's back, collects the rebound and plays on, the referee allows play to continue; the defender is the second player to touch the ball. If the throw is careless or worse, the referee penalises it as a direct free kick, or a penalty if it is in the thrower's own area, with whatever card is appropriate. A throw aimed at an opponent's head from point-blank range is excessive force and a sending-off.

The throw taken by the wrong team

Occasionally a team takes a throw that was awarded to the other side. That is a throw-in not taken correctly, and the throw goes to the team that was entitled to it. Since the 2026-27 amendment to the advantage clause, a referee whose wrongly taken throw has already put the ball at the feet of the team that should have had it may let play run instead of stopping it.

The throw to the referee

Referees are part of the field of play. A throw that hits the referee and goes to a team-mate is in play. If the ball strikes the referee and results in a promising attack, a change of possession or a goal, play is stopped and restarted with a dropped ball, under Law 9. That is not a throw-in rule as such, but it applies to a throw like any other ball in play.

Throw-ins in the English youth game

A seven-year-old cannot reliably take a throw-in. That is not a criticism; the coordination of keeping both feet on the ground while bringing both hands over the head is beyond many small children. The FA's youth formats acknowledge it in two ways.

In the formats for the youngest players, the FA has replaced the throw-in altogether. When the ball goes out, play restarts with a pass or a dribble in from the line, so that a restart keeps the ball moving instead of producing a stream of foul throws and handovers. Which formats use the pass-in, and how they fit into the FutureFit structure the FA has put in place from 2026-27, are set out in our guide to FA youth football rules.

A second attempt

In the small-sided formats that do use throw-ins, the FA's mini-soccer rules allow a player who takes a foul throw a second attempt, with a word of guidance from the referee, before the throw passes to the opponents. The aim is to teach the technique rather than punish a child for not yet having it. Leagues apply the detail as the FA's format rules and their own competition rules provide.

Where the full Law begins

The concessions fall away as the formats grow. By the time players move up to the larger formats and on to eleven-a-side, Law 15 applies as written, and a foul throw gives the throw to the other team at the first attempt. Junior coaches in England spend a fair amount of training time on throw-ins in the age group just before the switch, because a team that cannot throw correctly in its first season of the full Law spends a great deal of the game handing over possession.

From one-handed hurls to two hands, the end of offside at throws and a kick-in trial

The earliest codes treated a ball going out of play very differently. The FA's original laws of 1863 had the ball thrown in at right angles to the touchline by the player who first touched it after it went out, which turned every throw into a race. The Sheffield rules, which ran in parallel through the 1860s and 1870s, used a kick-in instead. The two codes were reconciled only gradually, and the throw-in that emerged was neither side's original.

1. 11863The FA's first laws have the ball thrown in at right angles by the first player to touch it once out.
2. 21880sThe British associations agree a common code and settle on a two-handed throw from over the head.
3. 31920Offside from a throw-in is abolished, freeing attackers to receive the throw anywhere.
4. 41994-95The Isthmian League trials a kick-in in place of the throw-in. The experiment is not adopted.
5. 51997Goalkeepers may no longer handle a ball thrown to them directly by a team-mate.
6. 62026-27A five-second countdown is added for throw-ins that the referee judges are being delayed.

Selected changes to the throw-in in the Laws of the Game. The exact wording of the early laws varied between associations before a single code was agreed.

Two hands

One-handed throws produced distance. Players hurled the ball overarm from the touchline into the goalmouth, and in the 1870s and early 1880s there was no rule common to the British associations about how many hands could be used. When the four British associations agreed a common code in the early 1880s, the throw was standardised as a two-handed delivery from over the head, and it has stayed that way. The one-handed version survives only in the mistakes of children.

Offside

Until 1920 a player could be offside from a throw-in. Abolishing it was one of a series of measures in the early twentieth century to open the game up, and it made the throw in the attacking third a real chance rather than a means of keeping the ball.

The kick-in that was not

In the 1994-95 season, the Isthmian League, then sponsored by Diadora, trialled the kick-in in place of the throw-in. The idea was to speed the game up and turn a stoppage near the corner flag into something closer to a free kick. The trial was not carried forward to the professional game, and the throw-in survived it unchanged. Its most significant amendments since have been the goalkeeper restriction of 1997 and, three decades later, the countdown.

The Laws as a whole, including where the throw-in sits among the other restarts, are summarised in our guide to the 17 Laws of football, and the rest of our coverage is gathered on the football hub.