It’s exactly one quarter of the way through the season, and with their arch-rivals flying into town, Sunday will still feature a battle for the top seat at the head of the Canadian Premier League table.
However, it’s visiting Cavalry FC who are now alone in first place after a month of Forge FC occupying that place of honour. The Hammers surrendered the league lead with a generally sluggish 2-1 loss to Atlético in Ottawa Saturday. That gave the Cavs a lot of emotional tailwind as they took the field in Calgary directly afterward, and they responded by pummelling last-place Pacific 3-0.
Forge fell from the ranks of the undefeated, and sit on 16 points with five wins, a draw (Cavalry) and one loss. Cavalry has 17 points from five wins and a pair of draws against no losses, and Inter-Toronto—the only team Hamilton has yet to face at the quarter-pole—is also undefeated but has played only six games and has 12 points.
“Not our best effort at all,” Forge head coach Bobby Smyrniotis acknowledged. “One of those games that we have once every year where it’s just kind of flat and it needed a little more. You feel a little hard done by because with a little bit more it would have been a better end result.
“We got the tying goal then, boom, there you go.”
Ottawa, playing with deep emotion as head coach Diego Mejía is about to depart the team for an undisclosed opportunity elsewhere, took a 1-0 lead in the 67th minute, forcing Hamilton keeper Dimitry Bertaud to make a terrific diving save before the rebound came to pursuing Noah Abatneh, who drove it home for the first goal Forge has surrendered this year from run of play.
Forge responded well, though, with Spanish attacker Ismael Oketokoun’s first CPL goal that stemmed from a perfect Ben Paton cross deep into the box, which eventually caromed to the 19-year-old.
But Ottawa took advantage of some inexcusable confusion in Forge’s box in the 87th minute and Joaquim Coulanges drilled a left-footer to the far post for the win.
Ottawa, which didn’t lose at home last season and is the reigning playoff champions, had been scuffling until a thorough victory over Toronto FC in the Canadian Championship’s sudden-death opening round, followed by a 1-0 win over HFX Wanderers.
With Cavalry coming into Hamilton Stadium (Sunday, 4 p.m.), during this week’s training sessions Smyrniotis wants to see, “a lot more energy and more focus on the details, whether that’s technical or whatever. I talked to the guys after the game and it hadn’t been their best week of training coming in—not effort-wise, just on sharpness. Sometimes it doesn’t transition into the game, and sometimes it does.
“And sometimes it’s a subtle piece of arrogance: things have been going well; things have been good for us; the other team had been struggling. What I told them before the game is that a team playing a final game for their coach will show some emotion.”
After the School Day Match the previous Wednesday Forge faced an uncharacteristic 10-day gap between games.
“It’s the first game where we’ve made some silly errors, right around the park,” Smyrniotis said. “And you make enough of those in a game, it’s going to cost you. That’s the reality of it. Until now we’ve been pretty well flawless at them... but you move on.
“Sometimes they say that when you have too much time off you lose a bit of rhythm, but like I’ve said as a coach, if you win the game you say the rest did us good.”
Cavalry, which lost a memorable playoff final to Ottawa last season, has won three in a row and was playing against a Pacific side which earlier in the week had parted ways with longtime head coach James Merriman, after taking only one point from their first six games.
The Cavs controlled possession but couldn’t solve Pacific until the 69th minute when their big names began hitting the scoresheet, starting with captain Sergio Camargo and followed by Amer Didić and Tobias Warschewski.
Warschewski now leads the CPL with four goals, and keeper Nathan Ingham has compiled four clean sheets, one fewer than league leader Bertaud.
“One thing I’ve learned over the years is that over the first 10 to 15 weeks the most important thing is to keep accumulating points, being in a certain place,” Smyrniotis said. “The last two years we won the Shield (as regular-season winners) and we were never in first place until Week 18. There’s going to be a lot of twists and turns.
“Sunday’s game against Cavalry is an opportunity for us to mount a good reaction: at home, an opponent that we know and it is usually a good game. It’s a good way to get back into it for our team.”
Meanwhile, 19-year-old forward Zayne Bruno, whom Forge signed to an Exceptional Young Talent contract last year, was called up to the Canadian Men’s National Team’s pre-camp in North Carolina last week, and returned Sunday night. He has been capped before for Canada’s U-18 and U-20 sides.
“When I got the call to say I would be going it was unexpected,” Bruno said. “I was there for a week with training and a scrimmage match on Sunday. I got a start and I think I showed well.
“A good number of national team guys and some of the bigger names like (Moïse) Mombito, Richie Laryea, and Ali Ahmed were there. It was special to be called up and it was different than the national youth camps. It was really exciting, especially with the World Cup right around the corner.”