It’s the same teams, same sport, but a different game. Tournament play, with advancement and exit concurrently on the line, is definitely not the same as league play.
So, while FC Supra du Québec and Forge FC have played four times already in CPL action, including twice in the last 13 days, their game Tuesday night (7 pm, TSN, OneSoccer) has its own distinct flavour and set of consequences. It’s the first leg of the two-game semifinal of the Canadian Championship for the Voyageurs Cup, with the return leg at Hamilton Stadium Sept. 15.
Lose the aggregate total, and you’re out, then concentrating solely on the remainder of the CPL season and playoffs; win and you advance to the national final against the survivors of the other, all-MLS, semi: defending champion Vancouver Whitecaps vs. CF Montréal. The winner of the countrywide championship tournament earns a bye directly into the Concacaf Champions Cup, the highest level of club competition in North and Central America and the Caribbean. Champions Cup berths are also awarded to the winners of the CPL Shield (regular season leaders) and the North Star Cup (playoff champions).
“It’s a great competition because it brings in all levels of the game in the country.” Hamilton head coach Bobby Smyrniotis says of the Canadian championship.
“It brings in three different leagues in a very exciting competition: MLS teams, CPL and Premier Soccer League Canada.
“And there is the importance of what you can get out of it, which is a Champions Cup spot. That’s something very important to us as a club: that every year you’ve got an opportunity to challenge for three trophies…and that’s the one we haven’t got our hands on yet.”
The Hammers were never going to look past FC Supra—it’s not in their competitive DNA—toward a second appearance in the Voyageurs Cup final. Late last week, before the Hammers headed to Laval to play Supra in a league game Friday, Smyrniotis said, “The guys understand the importance of this part of the season. You’re getting to the last round of games and having to balance two competitions, so there’s zero thought of any game but the one in front of you…. You never know what’s going to happen the next day.”
But that in-the-moment philosophy had to be intensified after expansion club Supra upset Forge 1-0 Friday night for the first clean sheet of their debut season, got their first league win in August after two losses and a pair of draws; beat Forge for the first time after earlier 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 losses and inched themselves back in the league playoff race. They’re now in fifth place, leading a three-pack of teams hoping to catch Vancouver for the final playoff spot. They’re just five points back of fourth-place Vancouver, with a game in hand. In the CPL’s 2026 World Cup-compacted schedule, Supra plays in Vancouver five days after Tuesday’s match against Forge and, with renewed hope and confidence, visits Forge for the second leg of the national tournament on Sept. 15, the fourth time the two teams will tangle within 27 days.
“The good thing is we played them just a couple of days before this, and we played them a couple of weeks ago, so we know the opponent,” Smyrniotis said. “It’s always a bit easier when you’re spinning from one game to another, on the same pitch, especially when you have a very tight schedule.
“They’re a little bit of an unpredictable team in the way they go about things in the attack. They attack a little bit open; the players have a lot of freedom to go different places on the field. That is a positive thing for them, but it can also be a negative thing because when you don’t have the ball, you’re a little all over the place.
“So, there’s always opportunities and space to play against them.”
Forge didn’t find, nor convert, enough of those opportunities Friday night in Laval despite some extended stretches of controlling the tempo and ball possession. But Supra was full measure for their victory, mounting more dangerous scoring chances, and making a 37th-minute penalty kick by Loïc Kwemi—after Antoine Batisse’s foul on Matisse Chrétien was found on video replay—stand up.
While Forge had some chances, they did not convert or sustain enough of them, and had broken defensive coverage, which forced Dmitry Bertaud to make glorious saves against Kwemi and Ibrahim Condé and left home-team shooters open two or three other times. Former Hammer Abou Sissoko was outstanding in the midfield. Kwemi leads the league with 10 goals and Supra teammates Sean Rea and Safwane Mlah have four apiece, while Rea has four assists and Forge legend David Choinière has three for his new team.
Forge has now lost three of its last five games and has fallen two points back of first-place Cavalry with nine games to play, but they aren’t panicking, and hard-nosed defender Rezart Rama, who missed the last three CPL matches with a red-card-associated suspension, will be back in the lineup Tuesday in Laval.
Supra, meanwhile, will now have a tailwind of motivation after joining the re-playoff race, and they’ll also draw on the examples of recent history, when Vancouver FC reached last year’s national championship despite finishing in last place in the league standings.