Stop us if you’ve heard this before—a lot of us can’t hear anything after the controlled chaos din of the School Day Match—but it’s awfully hard to score on Forge FC this season.
It’s Zero Tolerance. You wouldn’t see this many clean sheets in a detergent-testing lab.
Hoist up another fat Zilch as the Hammers controlled the CPL expansion club FC Supra behind fullback Dan Nimick’s well-placed worm-burner in the 56th minute against a stubborn Québec side which was outplayed but stuck to its game plan and kept it close at 1-0.
With creating a team identity in mind, and by following Forge’s successful template of starting a CPL franchise with a number of players who’d already played under the same amateur-team system, Supra has quietly emerged as one of the league’s upper-half teams in the season’s early going.
But like every team which has entered Hamilton Stadium this year, and that includes current Champions Cup finalists UANL Tigres, they exited it without a goal.
In their six CPL games, featuring identical two-win-one-draw records at home and on the road, first-place Forge has yet to surrender a goal from the run of play. The only round thing to find the back of the Forge net was a penalty kick conceded in Halifax 11 days ago as part of a 3-1 Forge win.
They followed that up with a 4-0 Canadian Championship opening round win over the same Wanderers at home on Saturday.
Their offence derives from 11-man defence and their defence starts with pressing defensive play by offensive players.
Dimitry Bertaud, the CPL’s Goalkeeper of the Month for April, had his fifth shutout in six games against a team which likes to take shots, particularly off the counter-attack, and as Bobby Smyrniotis pointed out, leads the league in shots. Most of those were blocked by a continuously stout Forge backline and Bertaud made sure that potentially dangerous crosses into the box when Supra did threaten were grabbed by him and him only. Supra did have some good moments with Diyaeddine Abzi hitting the crossbar, and some longer outside attempts as Forge conceded possession to open up space for counter-attacks in the final quarter hour or so.
Head coach Bobby Smyrniotis said he changed his formations quickly when Forge became sluggish and occasionally sloppy around the ball after the 70th-minute mark.
“We were dominant in the first half but maybe lacking a bit of killer punch; our spacing was off and we talked about it at halftime,” Smyrniotis said. “We have to be our dominant selves and when we do that we can neutralize a lot of things in an opponent. After the 70th minute we didn’t do our best job, managing what we do on the ball.
“They like to counter-attack and for a large part of the game they were going to play for one or two chances.
“They did a good job of sitting deep and trying to close things off. And in games like that you need something special to unlock it and we had something special to unlock it today.”
Which was Nimick’s foray upfield from centre back, then making a persistent dribble from the right side into the box during which he looked for a teammate to streak into open space. When that didn’t materialize he shot, with the ball hugging the turf all the way in beyond outstretched Supra keeper Jakim Milli. It was his first goal of the campaign in his fourth game back from injury. The old axiom of, “you miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take,” leapt to mind on this one.
“I don’t think I’m known for my left-foot finishes,” Nimick laughed. “Just hit it and hope; and it got to the bottom corner.
“They wanted to make it difficult for us to break them down and it was difficult. But we managed to keep a good shape most of the game.”
The atmosphere—with a raucous 15,211 roaring and fidgeting, most of them part of the armada of 200 buses from area schools—befitted the carnival-like enthusiasm which is rapidly mounting as the Men’s World Cup rounds the corner into its final 30-day countdown.
“It was a different crowd and they’re a lot more engaged,” Nimick said. “They’re obviously excited to be out of school and wanted to be here. They were joining in with all the chants.
“Glad we were able to get a goal for them.”
Smyrniotis added, “It was three good points in front of a fantastic crowd. Hamilton Stadium is a fantastic venue, especially when you fill it up. There’s a great energy to it and hopefully the kids were inspired and will keep coming back, with what we’re doing and what’s happening in the country in soccer right now.”
The game marked the return to Hamilton of longtime Forge fan favourite David Choinière, who had a couple of nice sideline runs in the first half. He was the first player to sign with Supra and is part of a dynamic attack which includes former Forge teammate Abu Sissoko.
He complimented Forge’s discipline and game plan, said his team stuck to their own game plan for the most part, was encouraged by the second-half surge and appreciated the beginning-to-end electricity of the massive youthful crowd but added, “It was weird. After being here so long, being in the other teams’ locker room was different.
“But at the same time I’m proud to be with Supra now.”
Forge is now off until a week from Sunday when they’ll visit Ottawa, which is coming off a Canadian Championship upset elimination of MLS side Toronto FC.
Hamilton returns to Canadian Championship action with a two-game home-and-away quarter-final against CS Saint-Laurent with the first leg in Montréal’s Stade Boréale on Wednesday, July 8 followed by the second leg at Hamilton Stadium Sunday, July 12.