Like his teammates, he’s facing a tightly compressed five days with two games 1800 kilometres apart, against the same team in two different competitions.
But there’s an even more poignant depth to the rare doubleheader for Forge fullback Daniel Nimick, who spent the last two seasons with HFX Wanderers. He was a 2023 finalist for the CPL’s Defender of the Year Award and led them in goal-scoring last year. The Hammers visit Halifax for a regular season game against the Wanderers Saturday (4 p.m., TSN One Soccer), then the two teams travel right back east for the single-elimination opening round of the Canadian Championship Wednesday (7 p.m.) at Hamilton Stadium.
“I think it’s all about managing the emotions of the situation,” says the 24-year-old centre back. “Saturday is obviously going to be a big game for me –a return to my old home—but I think just staying level-headed and staying locked in on the job we need to do is the most important thing.
“I think if adds a different dynamic having the two games so close, but we know they’re two important games and they’ll bring 100 per cent to both of them. We need to get it done in the first game, then try to do it again in the second game.”
Halifax has three wins and a draw from its opening quartet of league games, good for 10 points, two up on Hamilton, who are also undefeated but are coming off consecutive unsatisfying draws in which energy sags in the first half has kept them from harvesting the full three points.
It’s still early but these are significant fixtures: Forge doesn’t want to drop five points back of a team which is off to an uplifting start after losing its first nine games last year; and the return match is a sudden-death affair for the right to advance against increasingly-familiar MLS side CF Montréal in the two-game Canadian championship semifinal.
“They’ve come out flying, there’s a team belief there,” Nimick says of his former club.
“At Forge, we’re obviously not ecstatic with the past two draws, but we’ve also had a good start, so I think it’s a great matchup within the league; two of the teams who are undefeated.
“As an opponent, I’m excited to do it; I believe in our team, and I think we can get a result out of there. It’s a great matchup. They’re a team that likes to play, like we do. They’ve added some great talent to that team, and they’re playing really good football this year.”
Nimick was born in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, making him the first CPL player from Newfoundland-Labrador, but he moved to northern England with his family when he was just over a year old, and was trained in the Leeds Academy.
His departure for Hamilton was a big loss for Halifax, which entered the season without its top two shooters from last season: Nimick had eight goals, and Massimo Ferrin, now at York United, had six.
But the Wanderers have responded well. They got stronger inside the posts with 2023 Keeper of the Year Rayane Yesil, and fortified the backline with league stalwarts Thomas Meilleur-Giguère and Isaiah Johnston.
They also added dynamic French forwards Jason Bahamboula and Yohan Baï, and the results have been encouraging. HFX has already scored eight goals in four games, nearly a quarter of the 37 they scored over the entire 2024 season.
“It’s a very similar team to last year in what they’re doing on the pitch,” Forge FC Head Coach and Scouting Director Bobby Smyrniotis says of Halifax. “What’s changed is the results compared to last year’s beginning. They have started positively in the points column. As a group, with some new players, they’re playing with confidence. They’re going to play off energy, and they’ve got a good vibe in their group with the points they’ve earned, like last game, scoring in injury time to get another road win.
“It always makes it unique when you’re playing a team twice. The biggest thing is you can’t look forward to what’s after, you have to try to take care of business one game at a time. You don’t know what the future brings in these games.”
What is the Canadian Championship?
Smyrniotis and his core player leadership group have made no secret of the fact that they didn’t like surrendering four points in the standings from recent draws at home against Valour and on the road at York.
In each game, first-half depletions in overall vigour lasting about 15 minutes have fostered surges by their opponents, obliging Forge to up its game in the second 45 minutes.
“We’ve started both games well,” Nimick says. “We’ve come out good in the first five minutes, but for some reason, energy levels and the game plan have kind of dropped off in those first halves.
“But we’re still undefeated, and we’ve shown good responses in the second half of both games. I think learning from our mistakes, but not dwelling on them and focusing on the positives, is how we can really start to kick on.”
Smyrniotis put his team through rigorous paces this week, loudly reinforcing the need to play with sustained vitality.
“You just have to reiterate to the players what brings success,” he says. “Success is not brought by the name or the history or who are others are. It’s about the work you put into it, it’s about the attention to detail.
“It’s always about execution, and if it’s not executed well, it’s always about random football. There are a lot of random football games in our league, and what I don’t like is that we’re part of it. So, we want to make sure we have that execution.
“There are times in the season when you have small dips. At the end of the day, we’ve still won two games and tied two. In the two games we’ve tied, we’ve played at about 30 per cent capacity. That’s what you try to get guys to understand: put a little more into it, and then you’ve spun those games. In the game against Valour, we missed a penalty kick, and that’s going to happen, and we would have been at 10 points.
“But you’ve taken your foot off the gas and now you’re sitting at eight. We always want the result, but when you lose points, you want to make sure you’ve done everything you can to gain them.”
HAMMERS AND NAILS:
- Forge midfielder Ali Hojabrpour was named to the CPL’s Gatorade Team of the Week. In Sunday’s 2-2 draw at York, he instigated a goal, completed all 10 passes he made in the final third of the pitch, won six of his seven duels and made three tackles
- HFX Wanderers’ Giorgio Probo is tied for second in the CPL with two goals and ranks fifth with five shots on goal …
- Forge ranks fourth in team goals with six from four games, while Wanderers are second at eight, four back of league-leading Ottawa
- Halifax is third in team shots on goal with 21, with Ottawa’s 28 in the lead and Hamilton’s 15 ranked fifth
- The winner of next Wednesday's Canadian Championship preliminary single-game round between Wanderers and Forge will play CF Montréal, which edged TFC 3-2 on penalty kicks Wednesday night in Toronto.
- TFC’s opening goal was a brilliant effort from Hamilton’s Theo Corbeanu, who played minor soccer for Quinnville, Mount Hamilton, Hamilton Sparta and Saltfleet.