Well, in fact Pala and mass footmen is rlly good RT strat and when u have noob in team, u can consider urself lucky, if he goes for it. It minimalizes impact of his "lack of skill" on the game:
1. there is lower chance he will hurt himself (its lot harder to get pwnt on creeps with mass footies and pala than with, say, DH and some archers) :-)
2. and for me (UD player) its nice to have some KAMIKADZE front line :-)
I remember one seriously retarded dude who used to play on Xpam some yrs ago, when I was active. He made expo, like 4 barracs, produced shitload of footmen, and then he wrote "Me and my boys are comming to your base to pwn you" (or some shit like that). And attack moved my base.
GOGOGO with fiends against footmen with fucking defend.
I rlly had a tough time (too early game for destros). When he got pwned, lost every single unit, he ran with just a hero, and massed another shitload of footies. Then he wrote "Me and my boys..." and came again. It was actually pretty funny game and I learned back than, that nothing matches well played mass footmen with defend. U can tower up all u want, but unless you have some bloody mass of gryphs or stuff like that, u will get fucked up anyway. :-)
... Since then whenever I random human in RT and my sis (who likes to watch me playing) sees 2x rax and AM, she askes, If im doing "Me and my boys" again.