Long Throw-Ins in Football: Rules, Tactics and History
How the long throw in football works in England: the Law 15 rules, why nobody can be offside from it, how Stoke used it and why Premier League sides revived it.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Formations & Positions27 min read
- Law that governs it
- Law 15
- Opponents must stand back
- 2 metres
- Offside from a throw-in
- Not possible
- Goal direct from a throw
- Not allowed
A long throw in football is a throw-in delivered flat and hard from near the corner flag straight into the six-yard box, used as an attacking set piece in the way a corner or a wide free kick is. Under Law 15 of the Laws of the Game the thrower must face the pitch, keep part of both feet on or behind the touchline and release the ball with both hands from behind and over the head, with every opponent at least two metres away. Two facts make it dangerous. Nobody can be offside directly from a throw-in, and a fast, low ball arriving at head height is far harder to clear than a looping cross. One fact limits it: a goal cannot be scored directly from a throw, so the ball has to touch somebody on the way in.
The Britannia Stadium, the first day of November 2008. Arsenal arrived in Stoke as one of the most technically accomplished sides in Europe and left beaten 2-1, both goals having started with Rory Delap standing on the touchline with a towel in his hand. A newly promoted club had found something the Premier League's best defenders could not deal with. It was a throw-in.
Why a long throw counts as a set piece
Coaches in England file the long throw beside the corner, and the classification is more than a label. A throw-in on the halfway line is a way of restarting the game. A throw-in fifteen yards from the corner flag, taken by a player who can reach the near post with it, is a delivery into the box from a dead ball, with the attacking side free to arrange its bodies in advance. That is the definition of a set piece in all but name.
What makes the throw unusual is the method of delivery. A corner is struck with the foot, so the taker can generate pace and spin but loses some precision to the swing of the leg. A throw is delivered by hand. A good long thrower can put the ball within a yard of the spot he intends, repeatedly, because the hands and arms are the most accurate tools a footballer has. Delap's throws were often compared with a driven cross, but they were more predictable for his own team than a cross, and that predictability is half the weapon.
The trajectory matters as much as the accuracy. A corner taken with an inswinger hangs and curls, and a goalkeeper reading it has time to decide whether to come. A flat throw arrives on a line, sometimes still rising as it reaches the near post, and gives a goalkeeper perhaps a second to decide. Defenders facing their own goal have to head a ball travelling across them, not towards them. They are trying to send it out of the box with the side of the head while being bumped. Even a clean contact often only lifts the ball higher, and a ball that goes up comes down again in the area.
How often the situation arises
Throw-ins are the most frequent restart in a match. A team that can turn even the ones in the final third into box deliveries has, in effect, a set piece it can win simply by forcing the ball out of play near the corner. Stoke under Tony Pulis did exactly that: a full-back or winger would play the ball against a defender's shin rather than try to beat him, take the throw, and the team would reset as if a corner had been awarded. That is the reason opponents hated it. It turned an ordinary piece of defending, putting the ball out for safety, into the concession of a scoring chance.
The two facts that make a long throw dangerous
The first is in Law 11. A player is not penalised for being in an offside position when he receives the ball directly from a goal kick, a throw-in or a corner. That single exception means attackers can stand anywhere at the moment of the throw: beyond the last defender, on the goal line, behind the goalkeeper. The defending side cannot push up to leave them stranded, because no line they hold will catch anybody.
The second is physical. Heading the ball clear is easiest when it is dropping out of the sky towards a defender who is facing it. The defender gets set, jumps through the ball and sends it back the way it came. A long throw does the opposite. It comes in from the side, below the height of a normal cross, often travelling across the defender's face, and it is meeting a crowd of players who are jostling for position rather than standing still. The defender cannot attack it cleanly, and a glancing contact sends it on into the danger zone at the far post or straight up into the air above the six-yard box.
| Restart | Offside possible on first touch | Goal possible directly | Delivered with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Throw-in | No | No | Both hands |
| Corner kick | No | Yes, against opponents only | Foot |
| Goal kick | No | Yes, against opponents only | Foot |
| Direct free kick | Yes | Yes, against opponents only | Foot |
| Indirect free kick | Yes | No, needs a second touch | Foot |
Read the first column and the attraction is obvious. The throw-in shares with the corner the absence of offside, and it shares with the indirect free kick the need for a second touch before a goal counts. That second requirement is far less of a handicap than it sounds. The whole point of the long throw is to produce a touch in the six-yard box. Any touch counts, including a defender's.
Why the offside exemption exists at all
The throw-in was designed to put the ball back into play, not as a weapon, and the exemption predates the modern long throw by generations. Removing it would change every throw-in on the pitch to deal with a tactic few teams use. Our summary of the seventeen Laws of the Game shows how few restarts are treated this way.
Offside returns the moment another player touches the ball. A striker standing beyond the last defender is safe if he heads the throw in himself. If a team-mate flicks it on first and the striker was in an offside position at that touch, he can be penalised, and the semi-automated offside technology used in the Premier League will find him if the assistant does not. Long-throw teams learn to have their flick-on player at the front and their finishers level or behind, rather than lurking beyond the defence.
What Law 15 requires of the thrower
Law 15 is short, and every part of it matters to a long thrower because every part limits how far he can throw. At the moment of delivery the thrower must:
- stand facing the field of play;
- have part of each foot on the touchline or on the ground outside the touchline;
- throw the ball with both hands from behind and over the head;
- throw from the point where the ball left the field.
All opponents must stand at least two metres from the point on the touchline where the throw is taken, even if the thrower is standing back from the line. The ball is in play once it enters the field. If it touches the ground before entering, the same team takes the throw again.
Those clauses are what make the long throw so technical. The feet rule means the thrower cannot finish his run with a step onto the pitch as a javelin thrower or a cricketer would, so the energy of the run-up has to be transferred through a body that stops dead at the line. The both-hands rule means the ball cannot be slung from one side. The behind-and-over-the-head rule removes the most natural throwing motion people have, which is a one-armed, side-on action.
- PositionThe throw is taken from about the point where the ball left the field, and the assistant referee watches the spot.
- Opponents backEvery opponent stands at least two metres from the point of the throw, wherever the thrower is standing.
- FeetAt release, part of each foot is on the touchline or on the ground outside it. Lifting a foot at release is a foul throw.
- Hands and arcThe ball leaves both hands from behind and over the head, with the thrower facing the pitch.
- Ball enters playThe throw counts once the ball enters the field. If it lands outside first, the same team takes it again.
- First touchNo offside for whoever receives it directly. The thrower may not touch it again until another player has.
The order in which Law 15 conditions apply. Any failure before release is a foul throw and the throw-in goes to the opposition.
The feet: the commonest reason a long throw is lost
Watch a long thrower in slow motion and the back foot is the problem. A fast run-up and a violent forward whip of the arms tend to drag the trailing foot off the ground at the moment of release, and the Law requires part of each foot to be grounded. The lead foot can be on the line itself, since the line is part of the area it is marking, but it cannot be wholly inside the field. Referees in English professional football have tended to give some latitude on the precise instant of release while coming down hard on a thrower whose foot is clearly in the air. Grassroots referees vary more, and a youth player learning the technique should learn it with both feet planted.
The two-metre rule and the defender in the thrower's face
The two-metre clause arrived to stop opponents jumping and waving in front of the thrower. An opponent who stands closer, or who unfairly distracts or impedes him, is cautioned for unsporting behaviour, and if the throw has already been taken the referee gives an indirect free kick. A long-throw side sometimes invites the infringement on purpose, because an opponent standing two metres in front of the thrower is an opponent not marking in the six-yard box.
Our plain guide to throw-in rules and foul throws covers the ordinary throw-in, including the referee's signals. This page deals with what changes when the throw becomes a weapon.
What you cannot do with a long throw
There are three restrictions a long-throw team must plan around, and each produces an odd moment of football every season.
You cannot score directly. If the ball flies straight into the opponents' goal without a touch from anyone, the referee awards a goal kick. If it flies straight into the thrower's own goal, which can happen when a thrower tries to take a quick throw back to his goalkeeper, the opposition get a corner. The touch does not have to be deliberate. A goalkeeper who gets the faintest fingertip to a long throw that was going in has made it a legitimate goal. A defender who glances it on in trying to clear it has done the same.
The thrower cannot touch it again until another player has touched it. A long thrower who throws, runs in and heads the rebound without anyone else having made contact commits an offence, punished with an indirect free kick to the opposition. If he handles the ball the second time, the offence becomes a direct free kick, or a penalty if it happens inside his own area, which in practice it almost never does from an attacking throw.
A goalkeeper cannot pick up a throw from his own team-mate. Law 12 treats a throw-in from a team-mate in the same way as a deliberate back-pass with the foot: the goalkeeper may not handle it, and if he does an indirect free kick is given against his side. This matters for teams in their own half more than for long throwers, but it shapes the choice when a defending side wins a throw near its own corner and wants to waste time. Our page on the back-pass rule and what a goalkeeper may handle sets out where the restriction came from.
| Situation | Decision | Restart for |
|---|---|---|
| Thrown ball enters opponents' goal untouched | No goal | Goal kick to defending side |
| Thrown ball enters thrower's own goal untouched | No goal | Corner to opposition |
| Thrower touches ball again before anyone else | Offence | Indirect free kick to opposition |
| Thrower handles ball a second time before anyone else | Handball offence | Direct free kick to opposition |
| Goalkeeper handles a throw from a team-mate | Offence | Indirect free kick to opposition |
| Foul throw | Throw-in lost | Throw-in to opposition |
How a long throw is thrown: the technique
The run-up comes first. Long throwers use a run of a handful of paces, short enough to stay controlled and long enough to build speed. That depends on the space behind the touchline, which varies from ground to ground in the English pyramid. At a big Premier League stadium there may be several metres of grass or synthetic surface before the advertising boards. At an older Football League ground the throw may have to come off two or three steps. It is a genuine factor in how a long-throw side performs on the road.
The ball is held behind the head with both hands, fingers spread around its rear half. As the thrower approaches the line, the back arches like a drawn bow, the arms go back behind the head and the weight is transferred from the trailing leg to the front one. The release comes as the trunk snaps forward. The arms are the last link in the chain, not the first. Long throwers talk about the throw as a whole-body movement, and the strongest arm in the squad is no guarantee of the longest throw.
Delap, who had thrown the javelin as a schoolboy, had a faster and flatter release than most. He would towel the ball dry, take his run and fire the ball in on what looked almost like a straight line. Many players can reach the edge of the six-yard box with a looping throw. Very few can reach the near post with a flat one.
Why a low trajectory beats a high one
A ball thrown on a high arc can travel further, but it hangs. A defender has time to set, a goalkeeper has time to come and catch it, and the ball drops rather than arrives. A flat throw arrives faster than a defender can rearrange himself, and it reaches the first contact point at head height instead of above it. The trade-off is distance. A throw delivered on a flat line needs much more speed at release to cover the same ground, which is why the flat long throw is rare and the looping one is common.
Why most professionals cannot reach the near post
The chart shows the problem. A throw taken square to the goal line on a standard top-flight pitch must cover thirty metres just to reach the near post, and more if it is taken a few yards back down the touchline. Most outfield players cannot get a football anywhere near that far with pace on it. Thirty metres, delivered flat enough to be dangerous, belongs to a small number of specialists, and the far post is out of range for nearly everyone. That is why the target is the near post and the six-yard box rather than the penalty spot. A throw that reaches only the edge of the area is a header the defence can attack comfortably.
The routine around the throw
The throw is half the routine. What the other nine outfield players do in the three or four seconds before release decides whether it produces a chance.
Most long-throw routines in English football since Delap have used the same skeleton.
The flick-on at the near post
One tall player, usually a centre-back sent forward or a target man, stands at or just in front of the near post. His job is not to score. It is to get any contact on the ball that changes its direction, flicking it on across the six-yard box. A ball flicked on from the near post is the hardest delivery for a goalkeeper to deal with, because it changes direction a few yards from him and arrives at the far side with defenders turned the wrong way.
Bodies around the goalkeeper
Two or three players stand close to the goalkeeper. The Laws allow them to stand there and to compete for the ball. What they may not do is hold, push or block the goalkeeper without playing the ball. In practice, at a crowded set piece, referees in England have allowed a good deal of contact. The players around the keeper make it harder for him to come and catch the throw, and if he punches it he punches it into a crowd.
Runners arriving behind
The players who score from long throws are usually not standing still when the ball arrives. They start at the back post or on the penalty spot and arrive into the space the flick-on is heading for. Their movement is timed to the thrower's run, which is one reason long-throw sides drill the routine more than most teams drill corners.
The player waiting for the drop
At least one player stays on the edge of the area. Half-cleared long throws fall there all the time, and a ball dropping at the edge of the box is a shooting chance. Stoke's midfielders in the Pulis years became adept at volleying these, and it is one of the parts of the routine casual observers miss.
| Role | Where he stands at the throw | What he is trying to do |
|---|---|---|
| Thrower | Touchline, near the corner flag or level with the box | Deliver flat to the near post or six-yard box |
| Near-post flick-on | In front of the near post | Get any contact that redirects the ball |
| Goalkeeper screen | Two or three around the keeper | Stop the keeper coming cleanly for the ball |
| Back-post runners | Penalty spot or far post, moving at release | Arrive on the flick-on or the knockdown |
| Edge-of-area player | Just outside the area | Shoot or recycle the half-clearance |
| Rest defence | Halfway line | Stop the counter-attack if the throw is cleared |
How to defend a long throw
The defending side starts with a disadvantage it can do nothing about. It cannot squeeze up to play offside, so its defensive line has to sit deep, often inside the six-yard box itself. That gives the attackers an area to aim at and a crowd to aim into.
Every team has a version of the same plan. The best header of the ball in the side goes to the near post to meet the throw first, and if he can win that contact cleanly the danger is mostly gone. Others mark the attacking players man for man, while one or two defend zones in the six-yard box. A player is often stationed on the far post to clear anything flicked across.
Whether the goalkeeper comes or stays
This is the hardest decision. A goalkeeper who comes and catches it ends the threat. One who comes and misses has left an empty goal behind a crowd of attackers. Most goalkeepers facing a genuinely flat long throw stay on their line and leave the near post to an outfield defender, because the flatness of the ball makes a clean catch very hard. Against looping throws they come more often. The decision is about trajectory more than about courage.
Why defenders cannot step up
At a wide free kick a defending side holds a line on the edge of the area and pushes out as the ball is struck. Here any attacker is onside for the first touch, and a line that steps up only leaves space behind it for runners. So the defence has to stand deep and deal with the ball at the point where it arrives. That is the strength of the tactic and the reason teams with excellent defenders have struggled against it.
What works
Less glamorous than any of that: win the first contact, block the runner rather than watch the ball, and get to the second ball at the edge of the area. Bringing a tall forward back to defend the near post helps, and so does leaving one on halfway to make the attacking side keep men back. Both cost something elsewhere, which is the hidden tax a long thrower imposes.
Rory Delap and Stoke City in 2008-09
Stoke City were promoted to the Premier League in 2008, the club's first season in the competition and its first in the top flight since relegation in 1985. Most predictions had them going straight back down. They finished twelfth, and the main reason given at the time was Rory Delap's throw.
Delap had been at Sunderland and Southampton and had played in the Premier League before, but Stoke's manager, Tony Pulis, built a significant part of his attacking play around the throw. Stoke's full-backs and wide players would play the ball out for a throw in the final third deliberately. Delap would walk to the spot, pull a towel from somewhere near the advertising boards or from a ball boy, dry the ball and take his run. The other ten players went into the box as if for a corner. The throw arrived low and hard to the near post, a tall forward or centre-back tried to flick it on, and the rest of the side attacked whatever came off him.
The match that made the tactic famous came against Arsenal on 1 November 2008. Stoke won 2-1, and both of their goals came from Delap throws: Ricardo Fuller's after 11 minutes and Seyi Olofinjana's after 73. Arsène Wenger's side, built around short passing and players not selected for their heading, could not deal with a ball arriving that low and that fast. It was the moment the rest of the league stopped laughing at Stoke's throw.
The long throw in English football, year by year
Stoke's season was the peak, not the start. In effect they had reversed the risk calculation in every defensive third they visited: putting the ball into touch was no longer the safe option.
| Year | Event | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1970 | Ian Hutchinson's throw creates Chelsea's winner in the FA Cup final replay | The long throw decides the biggest domestic match of the season |
| 1998 | Dave Challinor throws 46.34 metres while at Tranmere Rovers | A Football League player holds the recognised record |
| 2008-09 | Delap's throws help newly promoted Stoke finish twelfth | The tactic arrives at the top of the English game |
| 2010 | Thomas Grønnemark throws 51.33 metres | The Guinness record passes to a specialist coach |
| 2018 | Liverpool hire Grønnemark as a throw-in coach | A top club treats the throw-in as a coaching specialism |
| 2026-27 | Laws of the Game introduce a visible countdown for delayed throw-ins | Time-wasting at throws, including towel routines, carries a cost |
Before Delap: Hutchinson in 1970 and Challinor at Tranmere
The long throw was not invented at the Britannia Stadium. English football had seen specialists before, and the most famous was Chelsea's Ian Hutchinson.
The 1970 FA Cup final between Chelsea and Leeds United finished 2-2 at Wembley on a pitch that had been badly cut up by a horse show, and it went to a replay at Old Trafford. Leeds led, Peter Osgood equalised, and the tie went to extra time. The winner came from a long Hutchinson throw, flicked on at the near post and headed in at the back by David Webb. Chelsea won 2-1. It is still the most famous goal created by a throw-in in English football, and it happened in a cup final watched by a vast television audience.
Dave Challinor's record
The best-known long thrower of the 1990s was Dave Challinor, a defender who spent most of his career in the lower divisions of the Football League, beginning at Tranmere Rovers. In 1998 he threw a football 46.34 metres, a mark recognised as a world record at the time. That is wider than the whole penalty area and comfortably more than half the width of a 68-metre top-flight pitch. It was a record attempt, not a throw in a match. Challinor's throws in matches were nonetheless a regular part of Tranmere's attacking play, and the club went on long cup runs in that period with set pieces doing much of the work.
- 46.34metresDave Challinor, 1998
- 51.33metresThomas Grønnemark, 2010
- 68metresTypical top-flight pitch width
Record attempts under controlled conditions, not throws in matches. Records of this kind can be broken at any time, and the Guinness figure is the one generally cited.
The record moved on in 2010, when Thomas Grønnemark, a Danish former athlete who had turned to throw-in coaching, threw 51.33 metres, the figure Guinness World Records lists. It is worth keeping the distinction in mind. A record throw is a single maximum effort with a long run-up and a dry ball. A match throw is taken with a wet or muddy ball, after running for an hour, with limited space behind the line. The longest match throws are much shorter than the record.
The towel, the ball boys and the clock
Stoke made the towel famous. A dry ball is easier to grip and goes further, so a towel was kept near the touchline at the Britannia and Delap dried the ball before attacking throws. Other clubs copied the habit. The Laws of the Game said nothing about towels either way.
The ball boys became part of the argument. A home side wanting its own long throws taken quickly expects the ball back fast, and a visiting thrower can find it arrives more slowly. No rulebook covered either practice.
How long a long throw takes
The bigger complaint was about time. A long throw means walking to the spot, drying the ball, measuring a run-up and waiting for the centre-backs to jog forty yards into the box, all while the ball is out of play. Referees could always caution a player for delaying the restart, but seldom did so at a throw the team was plainly about to attack with. The Laws of the Game for 2026-27 go further: a referee who judges a throw-in is being delayed can signal a visible five-second countdown, and if the ball is not in play when the count ends the throw-in goes to the opposition. It is aimed principally at time-wasting by teams protecting a lead. It also puts a long-throw routine with a towel and a slow walk on notice. How strictly English referees will apply the countdown to attacking throws, as opposed to defensive time-wasting, is something the first seasons under the new Law will show.
The fourth official stands between the technical areas and can draw the referee's attention to a delay, but the countdown itself is the referee's to give.
The flip throw and the specialist coach
The flip throw, sometimes called the handspring throw, has been seen in English youth and women's football and occasionally at professional level. The thrower runs in holding the ball, plants it on the ground, uses it to vault into a forward somersault and lands on both feet at the touchline, releasing the ball with the momentum of the whole rotation. The resulting throw can be enormous.
It is legal. Nothing in Law 15 governs what happens before the delivery, so a somersault, a run-up or a skip is allowed. What matters is the position of the thrower at the moment of release. If he lands with both feet on or behind the touchline, faces the field and delivers the ball with both hands from behind and over his head, the throw is good. The risk is in the landing. A flip thrower who lands one foot over the line, or who lets go of the ball during the landing rather than after, has taken a foul throw.
Why the flip throw stays rare
It needs space behind the line, a dry surface to plant the ball on and a gymnast's body control, and few coaches think the extra distance is worth the risk of a foul throw at a crucial moment.
Liverpool and the throw-in coach
In 2018 Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool hired Thomas Grønnemark, the record holder, as a specialist throw-in coach. The appointment was greeted with amusement in parts of the English press. It turned out to be less about long throws into the box than about the value of throw-ins as a whole. Grønnemark's argument was that a team keeps possession from many of its throw-ins and loses it from many others, and that improving the technique, the movement of the receivers and the speed of the restart could turn more of them into retained possession and attacks. A long throw is one use of that. Quick, accurate throws to a team-mate in space are another, and over a season they are more common. The appointment changed attitudes far beyond Anfield. Within a few years, specialist set-piece coaches were routine on the staff of Premier League clubs, and some of them treated throw-ins as part of the remit.
Why the long throw went out of fashion and came back
For most of the 1990s and 2000s, the long throw carried a stigma in English football that was hardly ever expressed in terms of results. It was associated with route one football and the long-ball era, with lower-league sides and with managers who had been dismissed by the smarter end of the sport as old-fashioned. As English football embraced possession, pressing and continental coaching, the long throw looked like a relic. Teams with long throwers often chose not to use them.
There was a cost to that, rarely measured at the time. Delap's Stoke showed the tactic still worked against the best teams in the country. When Pulis left Stoke in 2013 and his successors moved the club towards a more possession-based approach, the long throw declined with it, and so for a while did the visible use of the tactic across the league.
The change came when clubs started counting what set pieces produced. Data-led clubs, Brentford being the best-known example in English football, put serious coaching time into dead-ball situations because the numbers suggested they were underexploited. Corners and free kicks attracted most of the attention at first. The throw-in followed, because the logic was the same: a situation that occurs dozens of times in a match, in which the attacking team can arrange its players in advance, should not be wasted.
The return in the Premier League
By the middle of the 2020s the long throw had come back into the Premier League in a way that would have been hard to predict a decade earlier. Several clubs had at least one player who could deliver the ball into the six-yard box, and set-piece routines that would have been familiar to Stoke supporters were being run by sides who also played possession football the rest of the time. The difference from the Delap era is that the modern long throw is one option among many in a set-piece repertoire, chosen because the data says it works, rather than the centrepiece of a style.
- Ball goes outPossession is won or forced out of play in the final third and the long thrower walks to the spot.
- Players arriveCentre-backs and tall forwards jog into the box. One stays at the near post and two stand around the goalkeeper.
- Run-up and throwThe thrower uses his available run-up and delivers flat towards the near post.
- First contactThe near-post player flicks the ball on or the defender heads it, either way changing its direction.
- Second phaseRunners from the penalty spot attack the flick, and the edge-of-area player waits for the drop.
- Reset or counterIf the ball is cleared, the attacking side's rest defence on halfway tries to stop the break.
A composite of the near-post routine described above. Individual clubs vary the starting positions.
There is a judgement worth making plainly. The long throw was never as crude as its reputation. Executed well, it is a precise, rehearsed set piece that uses an exemption in the Laws as intelligently as any free-kick routine. Its decline had more to do with fashion than effectiveness, and its revival is what happens when clubs look at the evidence instead of the aesthetics. Defending sides now prepare for it as they do for corners, so it no longer ambushes anyone the way it ambushed the league in 2008.
What changes next
The countdown under the 2026-27 Laws is the obvious variable. A long-throw routine that relies on a slow walk, a towel and a long wait for the centre-backs to arrive will have less time to set up if referees enforce the count at attacking throws. A routine that relies on technique and rehearsal can survive it. The likeliest outcome is that the slow, theatrical version of the long throw declines and the quick, drilled version stays, which would be no great loss. For more on how the game is organised at the top level in England, our football section gathers the site's wider coverage, and the England sports hub collects the guides on every other sport we cover.