Patrick Heroica Goalkeeping Gloves

Patrick Heroica, the gloves that promise so much.. I bought a pair of the Patrick Heroica gloves, mostly out of curiosity, but also because they left a good first impression. The first thing you notice about these gloves is the comfort... and the price. They come in at around $80 AUD for a pair, making them apparently a great value bargain.After spending some time with them, it becomes clear that the Patrick Heroica's aren't much more than a made-in-china imitation of the Reusch Duo Ortho Techs. Whilst they might be ok for juniors or training, a few fundamental design flaws mean you won't want to take them out, if you are a serious match player.After my first game, i noticed my first problem: one of the fingersaves in the back of the glove snapped clean apart. On further inspection of the removable supports, (IMHO i've never understood why they make these things removable anyway?), several of the plastic 'links' in the plastic 'chain' that comprises the support had smashed. hm. Anyway. Not to be deterred, i though i'd give the gloves a 2nd shot (who knows, maybe the support was weakened in store). I returned them and swapped them for a 2nd pair. Grip with the gloves isn't too bad; however they aren't 'sticky' right out of the box. They did take me a couple of games to warm to them (or rather, for them to warm to me), and in this time i did drop a few balls resulting in a few goals.Two weeks and five games later, i type here with a jarred little finger. The injury was caused by a tough, forward coming shot which hit me on the top of the finger; and here i noticed a quite serious flaw with the glove design. The glove provide good behind-finger support; but support towards the top of the finger is capped quite low - therefore certainly there is little if any support for the tops of fingers. Certainly compared to other gloves i've owned (by sondico, reusch and adidas), the Heroicas provide far less of an 'encasing' for each finger... at best some shot-stopping support, but at worst, a real injury threat. The Patrick gloves are a really comfortable fit. They also take well to airing after a game, which means less smell. But for all of the glove's positive points, there's negative that outweigh. I often wondered why no big-name professionals wore endorsed these gloves, now it's not too hard to see why.