From one kind of feline right to another
Done with the Lions, now for the Tigers.
Forge FC concluded its warm-weather training camp in Cancún with Tuesday’s friendly game against Major League Soccer’s Orlando City SC—nicknamed the Lions—and returns to training in Hamilton on Thursday.
They’ll use the five remaining days of practice—some indoors, some outdoors—to continue zeroing in on Los Tigres, the powerful Mexican side they’ll face at Hamilton Stadium in Tuesday’s opening leg of the home-and-away first round of the Concacaf Champions Cup.
WHAT IS CHAMPIONS CUP AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
As mutually agreed beforehand, Orlando City and Forge did not keep score during this week’s friendly on the Mayan Riviera. They were each preparing for different things; Orlando City for their MLS regular-season opener Feb. 21 in Orlando against New York Red Bulls; Forge for Tuesday’s date with Los Tigres.
“We were playing more against Tigres than playing against Orlando,” Forge head coach Bobby Smyrniotis said from Mexico. “All the focus was on that. I thought that our guys did an excellent job executing. Apart from a few little things they were spot-on in some of the stuff we were working on and going out there and executing it against a high-level team like Orlando.
“I thought it was a very competitive match. We were good in all phases of the game, the attack and defending, as well as trying out some different looks in preparation for what we’re going to see from Tigres.”
It was the second straight year the Hammers have played a friendly against the Lions and they, again, held their own.
“They had their best team out there to start,” Smyrniotis said. “They split their team into ‘one-and-a-half,’ you could call it with most of their best guys playing about 60 minutes or so.
“The whole time I’m looking at our processes. The new guys on our side were very good integrating into the team and showed quality. For what we wanted in wrapping up this part of preparation, it was very good. It gives us a chance to come back to Hamilton for the first leg and zero in on just a few details we need to look at and firm up.”
Champions Cup is only the start of it
The Concacaf Champions Cup is just one of the major pieces of hardware Forge will chase this season. They’ll also compete in the Canadian Premier League regular season—the winner of which enters the 2027 Cup—and hopefully the CPL playoffs (the winner earning a Cup berth) as well as the TELUS Canadian Men’s Club Championships, which also has a Cup berth at stake.
The Hammers play a familiar rival in the opening round of the TELUS Canadian Championship when the CPL’s HFX Wanderers visit Hamilton Stadium. The date of that game is still to be announced.
Hamilton beat the Wanderers 3-1 in the opening round of last year’s national championships before eliminating CF Montréal in the quarter-finals.
During the 2020 Island Games, which were played in a pandemic bubble in PEI, the Hammers beat Halifax 2-0 in the playoff final which also served as a semifinal for the Canadian championship. The 2020 final was eventually postponed to 2022 and Forge was defeated in penalty kicks by Toronto FC.
Over the seven-year history of both franchises, the Hammers have played the Wanderers 29 times across all competitions with Hamilton winning 14 games, drawing 10 others and losing just five matches.