You can be quite silly sometimes.

Of course it is. Pretty much everything is easier in a practice situation than a game. The reason that techniques are practiced is still with the aim of improving their execution in a game though.

I'll reiterate that I personally don't blame Pitts for not taking that ball, but I don't think your above comment really has a point.

The point is that one poster is saying that Pitts should have been expected to take the 'pass' because the team practise the technique in a training drill. This is obviously nonsense. The drill is practised to increase the chances that a player might collect a pass that is extremely difficult to take. This does not mean that a player can be 'expected' to take an ankle-height ball in the same way as they do when they're doing a training drill where they know such a pass is on the way.

I reckon Whiting would have took it, no problem.
What do you think RGX ?

Watch it again. The ball was ankle height for Pitts and thigh height for Westerman. Westy was far closer to the passer and had the ball popped at near zero relative speed; Pitts was much further away and had to deal with a ball that reached him after bouncing well short.

Anyone seriously comparing the two cases is clutching at straws.

The ball bounces well short of him and barely clears his laces. Hence why I said he'd have been better off hacking it forward than trying to catch it IMO.

Fook me!
We'll be calling in 'scenes of crime' shortly.

Not really, everything's easier in training. You could apply that to anything.

Do they not practise these things as a just in case? I've seen prop forwards have to catch bombs put up, just in case. Just because it doesn't happen that often isn't an excuse when you're trained to do it.

You're being stupid. Training to improve certain techniques doesn't mean you can be expected to execute that technique faultlessly every time. Just as a goal kicker has an 'excuse' for missing a conversion from the touch line, so any player has an 'excuse' for failing to collect a ball that is slung at his ankles.

Who cares? You won easy

Well put, but until someone else cocks up this will run for a little longer.

It's fairly stupid to think that I said he should take it faultlessly every time, but there you go.

That incident replayed I would bet 8/10 times Pitts takes that ball, because he's trained to take it. If you're too stupid not to realise that's what I said, then that's not my fault, is it?

You're right, it did bounce first. As I have said, I don't blame him for being able to gather it at all, I was just pointing out that ehfc is not actually wrong to say that Pitts did also make an error and that we do specifically practice low pick ups.