With the anxiety-producing Canadian Championship opening round successfully behind them, Forge FC gets to welcome a new team and a couple of old friends to one of the signature games of the CPL season.
The annual School Day Match and all its attendant mayhem invade Hamilton Stadium Wednesday morning (11 a.m.) as well over 10,000 students, teachers, parents and Hammer-heads raise the noise level to airport runway levels when FC Supra du Québec visits the city for the first time.
In last year’s school day match, featuring a 2-2 draw with eventual league champion Atlético Ottawa, the crowd of 17,911 shattered the all-time CPL attendance record, outdistancing the previous mark of 17,611, also in Hamilton for the Canadian Premier League’s inaugural game in 2019.
It’s a return to league action for both teams after each got through the weekend’s opening round of the national tournament fairly easily: Forge continuing to find its collective shooting eye with a dominant 4-0 win over visiting, but overmatched, HFX Wanderers and Supra winning 3-1 over Ontario Premier League side Woodbridge Strikers.
“It’s special,” Hammers head coach Bobby Smyrniotis says of the School Day Match. “For two years now, with this the third, it’s been absolutely phenomenal.
“At the beginning of the idea we were like, ‘What are we doing out here playing at 11 in the morning?’ But once you get out there and see the stadium full it’s the image you want for this group. That is where we want to grow to week-in and week-out for our team at this stadium.
“It’s a great day to be able to energize young people, first and foremost about the game and more importantly to educate them about Forge and who we are and make them come out to see more in future games.”
Supra, based in the Montréal satellite city of Laval, made original Forge David Choinière—a franchise legend here—their first signing and he has embraced the CPL’s incursion into the area where he got his start in professional soccer. He ranks third in Forge career appearances, behind Alex Achinioti-Jönsson and Kyle Bekker, third in goals behind Tristan Borges and Woobens Pacius and has scored some of the biggest goals in Hamilton history.
He notched his first goal for Supra over the weekend with the insurance third goal in the 78th minute against Saint-Laurent on an unmarked run-through onto a pass from former CPLer Sean Rea who helps spearhead the attack and leads the Québec side with a goal and an assist. The winning goal had been scored by Abu Sissoka, another Forge alumni, who played here in 2022 and 2023 and helped them to a league title.
It’s the return to league play for both CPL clubs and comes on short rest after the Canadian tourney opener. Supra has six points and five goals from its four matches to date to sit mid-pack as Forge and longtime rivals Cavalry FC have separated themselves from the remaining half-dozen. But the caution, as always, is ‘it’s early.’
Undefeated Forge has 13 of a possible 15 points but the only two points they dropped, a 0-0 draw with the Cavs, came at home.
But that’s a small complaint in a second successive brilliant season start. Last year Forge went a record 20 games from the opening kickoff before they lost. This year, despite early injuries, they have not allowed a single goal from the run of play. Their only goal against was off a debatable penalty kick call in a convincing 3-1 victory in Halifax a week earlier.
So Forge, which had netted only four goals in its first four league matches (but hadn’t allowed any) now has seven scores in the last two games, albeit against the same team.
Forge’s Canadian Championship first-round win over Halifax was never really in doubt, and survived a delay of over an hour precipitated by lightning danger in the 70th minute, as well as a missed penalty kick by Wright whose targeted drive was athletically stopped by keeper Marco Carducci.
But Wright came back to score his third goal in as many games in the 54th minute. Forge started on the front foot and mostly stayed there and scored two goals in the final couple of minutes of the first half and another pair in the first nine minutes of the second half.
The Wanderers had hope after settling into the game but Forge kept the pressure on and Borges broke the ice with a free kick from 28 yards out on the right side that curled into the upper inside of the far post and was reminiscent of his ‘Olimpico’ which won Forge the 2023 CPL title.
Smyrniotis was asked if Borges’ strike was, in any way, stoppable.
“No,” he answered quickly. “It’s as simple as that.”
Antoine Batisse’s second headed goal in as many games, off a corner kick, and Wright’s “striker’s” goal off a rebound forced by Borges’ thundering shot clinched the win. From there, as Smyrniotis put it, he had to challenge the team by imploring them to protect Dimitry Bertaud’s sixth blank sheet in his seven Forge games (four in the CPL, one in Champions Cup, one in the Canadian Championship). He was also able to make the substitutions he wanted with only a short break before the Supra visit, including the debut of 17-year-old attacking midfielder Aghilas Sadek, who made some of the bold penetrations Smyrniotis has been looking for.
In a single-knock-out game, a dramatic save on a penalty kick could have had disastrous repercussions but Forge, and Wright, responded very well. Within two minutes Hamilton took a lead they would only fatten.
“The good thing was our reaction after the penalty kick,” Smyrniotis said. “We kept on producing and you need that one goal (Borges’ brilliant strike) because that one opens up the game differently. When you get that and do it in quick succession with the two goals, combined with the previous week it gives you confidence.
“The guys were in control, and 80 to 90 percent of the time we got the ball to where we wanted it. A few times you lose concentration when up 4-0; there’s always 10 to 15 per cent where you could be better but you have to be happy with the game.”
Not if you are a Wanderer.
Halifax defender Kareem Sow tipped his hat to Borges’ great play but said the “second and third goals were disgraceful and had things we should be doing and did not.”
His head coach Vanni Sartini, having lost twice by a combined 7-1 to Forge within eight days said his team has been competitive with the rest of the league but that HFX is ”miles away from (Forge) at the moment.”
Smyrniotis said he hoped the offensive outburst would have a communicable effect as his team has been spending extra training time on set pieces and being more clinical in the final third.
“For attackers, once you get a sniff of scoring goals you feel better,” he said. “You look at a guy like Brian who has a goal in each of the last three games. Antoine has a couple and he’s phenomenal on set pieces in training. And for that to come out in the match as well, it’s encouraging.
“Things have been going well defensively. We’re not scoring but we’re doing the right things. We needed to increase our frequency of getting into the zone, and eventually we got set pieces, which come from attacking.
“It was a big game for us.”
And Wednesday morning’s School Day Match with Supra is a big game for local and Canadian soccer, arriving as it does exactly 30 days before Team Canada kicks off its men’s World Cup challenge.
“Supra is a new team,” he said. “They’re an exciting team, trying to build their identity. Whether their results have been good, or haven’t gone their way, they’ve been a very good team and have their way of playing. It’s good to see and always a new challenge for all of us.”
After Wednesday, Forge has 10 days off before travelling to Ottawa, then has four more games before a 20-game hiatus for the World Cup. They’ll begin a two-round Canadian Championship quarterfinal in early July against Québec semi-pro side CS Saint-Laurent, which upset and eliminated the CPL’s Inter-Toronto 1-0 over the weekend.