‘I competed in javelin at county level and cleaned up. I think my personal best was 55 metres when I stopped at 14 or 15 and football took over instead’ Long throw ace Rory Delap on his incredible trademark

Stoke City's Rory Delap prepares to launch his long throw in a game against Hull City.

For younger football fans, Rory Delap is probably more famous as the father of Chelsea striker Liam Delap, but ask any fan of a certain age about him and you’ll get a very different answer.

That’s because father Rory was the man who turned the humble throw-in from a functional part of the game to a deadly set-piece. If for whatever reason you don’t believe us, then we challenge you to find another footballer with a longer ‘throw-ins’ section on their Wikipedia page than the 941-word opus that Delap’s page has at the time of writing.