Raycast not detecting the collision when hitting ground

I have a ground object that has a Collider2D attached to the ground game object, this game object has a layer name of "Ground". I have a player object that walks on the ground but when the player moves in the air to fall on the ground the collision does not occur using the Raycast:

Here is the code in the fixed update:

    Debug.DrawRay(transform.position, transform.TransformDirection(-Vector2.up) * 0.7f, UnityEngine.Color.red);

    RaycastHit2D hit = Physics2D.Raycast(transform.position, transform.TransformDirection(-Vector2.up), 0.7f);

    // If it hits something...
    if (hit && hit.transform.gameObject != gameObject && hit.transform.gameObject.layer == LayerMask.NameToLayer("Ground"))
    {
        Debug.Log("Hit " + hit.transform.gameObject.tag);
    }

Here is the DrawRay inside the game when viewing the scene:

You can see the raycast of the red colour which is intersecting the player and the ground.

Where am I going wrong.

When i remove "&& hit.transform.gameObject.layer == LayerMask.NameToLayer("Ground")",

I get a hit when the player is on top of the ladder and moves down from the ladder.

Well hitting the player layer in the first place makes little sense

You also only got one single hit and discard potential others

=> If you hit the player you ignore it. If eventually you also hit the ground at the same time remains undedected!

You rather want to use a proper LayerMask in order to only check/hit those layers (Ground) you are actually interested in!

public LayerMask groundLayers;

...

RaycastHit2D hit = Physics2D.Raycast(transform.position, transform.TransformDirection(-Vector2.up), 0.7f, groundLayers);

Might also be interested in using my SingleLayer implementation. It is basically a dropdown similar to the LayerMask with the difference that it is for only a single layer instead of a mask