Forge FC has returned to town for Stage Two of their 2026 calendar, opening regular-season training camp in frigid temperatures. Appropriate for a franchise which has always had ice in its veins.
It’s already their second short off-season and second training camp of the year after an intense Concacaf Champions Cup whirlwind which saw them train alfresco in sub-30-degree weather in Hamilton spiced with a couple of weeks in sunny and warm Cancun, then stunned heavily-favoured Tigres UANL with a 0-0 opening leg draw before losing 4-1, fading late in the away game.
And Monday morning head coach Bobby Smyrniotis and his staff had them out there at wide-open Hamilton Stadium—not under cover of a dome—as the wind chill sank into the deep minus temperatures.
Forge qualified for Champions Cup by winning the CPL Shield as first-place finishers in the Canadian Premier League’s regular season, during which they went a league-record 20 games—and 24 across all competitions—without a loss. Still, there was a stinging level of dismay as they were edged in back-to-back semifinals, first by Cavalry FC and then eventual playoff winners Atlético Ottawa. So, for the first time in the six-year history of the franchise and the CPL, the quadruple league champions were forcibly excused from the title game.
As they embark upon what athletes refer to as “the grind” of a regular season, Forge’s mindset and intent are fuelled by both discontent (missing the final) and stimulation (the Tigres series).
“I think this is the most exciting part,” veteran midfielder Noah Jensen said of the five weeks of practice leading up to the season and home opener, April 4 against Ottawa.
“Preparing for two games in Concacaf is one thing but preparing for a whole season is a different challenge, and this next month is going to be very important to set us on the right foot for the season.
“Playing in the second leg in a Concacaf game and knowing that if you get a result you get through to the second round was different for us. In the past that hasn’t really been the case and I think something like that maybe teaches us how close we are to achieving something that is really, really good.
“But I also think that the disappointment from last season was more of a teaching moment. Learning that, as good as a season we had, if we’re not playing our best at the end of the season we’re going to miss out on the opportunity to do amazing things. We all learned how much it sucked to sit at home on our couches and watch the final. That’s the only feeling we need going into this year.”
Forge will play three pre-season “friendlies” on successive Saturdays, beginning this weekend, behind closed doors at Hamilton Stadium against Guelph University, then Forge’s Montréal-based affiliate club CS RMO, and Woodbridge Strikers, reigning champions of the newly-rebranded Ontario Premier League.
“When you play in those big games it’s easy to get yourself up for it,” Jensen notes. “These next few exhibition games are going to be very important to get us ready. There’s going to be no fans, no one there except ourselves to bring energy to the games. Those are the environments you sometimes need a bit more to teach yourselves what it’s going to take to win in the CPL. You’re not going to show up at (Vancouver FC’s) Willoughby Park and there’ll sometimes be 10,000 fans.”
While the Hammers were technically ‘off’ in the 18 days between flying back from playing Tigres in Monterrey and reporting back to work Monday, that was not the reality. All the players were assigned specific, individualized physical maintenance programs, and a handful have been regularly training together in the club’s stadium facilities. They all have to recalibrate their psychological and physiological tuning for the marathon six months of regular-season competition.
“It’s more of just a mindset shift, especially when you come to this time of year,” Jensen said. “There’s a lot of attention to detail and focusing on how you can get better, even a little bit, every single day. Not just yourself but as a team. Over the course of a season there’s a lot of time to get to know each other but every day is part of the process to know your teammates better and what they want to do on the field and how we can be successful together.”
Forge incorporated seven new players onto the roster during the Champions Cup and that gives them a bit of a leg up on the 28-game season, says Smyrniotis. They’ve already played six matches—four friendlies, followed by the brace of Cup games—so they’ve got some feel for the collective 90-minute flow and were able to integrate new players into the club’s overall mentality, and saw that they have the ability to change things tactically in an instant. Against Tigres, they were forced to be patient against an ultra-elite team’s extended onslaughts of ball possession but also shift into their more-traditional aggressiveness when the occasion was right. And Smyrniotis feels gaining that kind of confidence helps the team rise to the challenge of taking the baby steps into yet another season when every league club will pin a target on Forge’s back.
“Remember, some of these players were there throughout (January’s) camp and some came into games on just a week or two weeks training,” Smyrniotis said. “Today, it’s different: everyone knows each other and they’ve already fought together against what you could say is the toughest opponent we’ll play this year. Players gain trust in themselves when they’ve gone through games like that. It allows them to see what everyone’s there for.
“These are two different camps. In the one it’s a short off-season and you’re preparing for a single mission, which is Champions Cup and one direct opponent. Now, we’re preparing for the long haul. We’re focussing on our principles, which will give us the longevity we believe we need in the season. We’re just going to go day-by-day, week-by-week, not focussing on any opponent, but fully focussing 100 per cent on ourselves.
“That’s our DNA and we’ve talked about this a lot in the past: 90 per cent is what we do, it’s 10 per cent our opponent. Here it’s working through processes, different things we want to see in the team to start the season. We have to evolve during a season when you’re playing each team four times in our league. As a coach you see different things, different qualities, so you may move things around on the pitch. We’ve been good at doing that: we’re a very fluid team which can change; not ways of playing, but structures, where players play on the pitch. That’s something we work on a lot in the pre-season so when we’re in the season those things become automatic to the players.”
Smyrniotis emphasizes that he’s big on resiliency and working without making excuses. It’s not new for this club to practice in an outdoor refrigerator. They just did it for three weeks.
And is there also a “toughen up” element to it?
“Yes.”