Lots of ways to describe Forge FC’s victory over the plucky HFX Wanderers last night but we’ll choose this one:
Professional.
The Hammers’ well-crafted 3-1 win over the visiting Halifax side, just four days after the same two teams played to a scoreless draw on the east coast, was fashioned from the collective cool of experienced competitors, who sense deep in the marrow that there is a significant difference between early-season league play and a single win-or-you’re out match.
With their victory in the opening round of the Telus Canadian Championships, the Forge will now meet Major League Soccer side CF Montréal in a home-and-away series in what is becoming an inter-league rivalry of, well, “major” proportions.
It will be the fifth time in five years that Hamilton faces Montréal, whom they finally upset in last year’s Canadian quarter-finals. Game one will be at Hamilton Stadium on May 20 or 21, with the second leg back at Stade Saputo in early July.
And therein lies even more symmetry: with a July 12th CPL match scheduled in the Nation’s Capitol, this will be the third straight year that Forge has to proceed from a massive Voyageurs’ Cup match in Montréal to play on the road against Atlético, which currently leads the CPL standings.
“It’s always a good match-up,” Forge head coach and technical director Bobby Smyrniotis said, looking ahead to the next round. “Obviously we had some success last year. But each and every year is different. Our team is different than in the past, their team is different than in the past.
“(The Canadian Championship) is a competition we don’t take lightly in any way. But it brings a lot of challenges. Today, Halifax was a challenge. And the two-legged series against Montréal will be as big a challenge as we face all year, and we’ll be prepared for it.”
They were certainly prepared for the Wanderers, a vastly improved outfit from last year who sit two points ahead of the third-place Forge in the CPL table and, like Hamilton and Ottawa, haven’t lost a league game this year.
After bursting from the gates with two wins, Forge had three successive unsatisfying draws heading into Wednesday night’s Cup game. Smyrniotis had been concerned about their lack of aggressiveness and finish in the final third of the pitch and worked on it all week in training. Veteran attacking stars like Brian Wright, Mo Babouli, David Choinière and Tristan Borges hadn’t quite played up to their potential but they were all on fire from the opening kickoff against HFX. Earning two corner kicks within the first 150 seconds, and scoring twice inside of 26 minutes, although one was a Halifax own goal, off an unfortunately misguided header from Wanderers defender Kareem Sow. But even that resulted from intense Forge pressure and Choinière’s aggressive cross.
An inattentive letdown late in the first half, created by some Halifax pressure of their own, led to a somehow unmarked Thomas Meilleure-Giguère nodding in a goal off a corner, slicing the lead in half. But they responded well after the intermission, finding a better defensive shape and still probing up front. Even when Halifax went for fresh legs with much earlier substitutions, Smyrniotis resisted responding with his own subs until the 73rd minute, because he liked how his side was reacting.
And Babouli, who was outstanding after being given more of a free rein to roam into empty spaces in a tactical adjustment by the coaching staff, responded by taking a seeing-eye feed from Nana Ampomah and clinching the game with his second goal a minute into extra time.
Halifax, which has amassed more attacking talent and depth, had a lot of possession but generally were kept away from the prime scoring areas as Forge let them overplay a number of situations when more patience was likely required from the visitors. That’s a function of Forge’s deep history of playing in crucial elimination matches, the kind of professional experience the Haligonians concede they’re still building.
“We have to learn from the losses and the wins, and then manage it,” said Wanderers’ attacking midfielder Giorgio Probo, who was dangerously creative all night. “Forge is experienced, and these games will give us a lesson for the future.”
Babouli delivered his best outing since returning to Forge after a couple of years with York United and glided from side to side with fluidity, finding the pockets almost by instinct. He agreed that staying cool-headed as a group stems in large part from Forge’s repeated exposure to, and success in, critical playoff and Concacaf matches.
“It’s about repetition and keeping the energy good and keeping the locker room good,” he said. “I try to play my part in that, and others do the same, some of them probably more than me. We try to feed off each other.
“When you’re doing the same things over and over, it’s your comfort zone. We try to repeat in the games what we do in training, so it just becomes more natural. We’re not perfect, we make mistakes, but at the end of the day, if we make mistakes, our reactions are going to be good. Today we were good, the energy was good. Everything was good. At times it hasn’t been this way this year, but we haven’t lost this year, and that’s very good for us in keeping the confidence high.”
Forge answered Smyrniotis’s forceful call for more energy –and bodies—in the scoring areas with not only the two first-half goals but a couple of other excellent chances. And their opening goal was a thing of beauty. It was at least a five-touch play, culminating with a classic give-and-go from Borges to captain Kyle Bekker, who drove with determination and speed deep to the left side and squared the ball back to Babouli for the smash-in past Halifax keeper Rayane Yesli.
“You look at our front group and we have guys like Mo, Tristan, Brian, David,” Smyrniotis said. “Add up their goals and assists in the CPL, and there’s a lot. And that hasn’t been firing as much as we want. We knew it was going to come. They’re doing things well off the ball, but we needed to put the ball in the back of the net.”
And they did that when most needed; early, and in front of a relatively small but enthusiastic home crowd, in an elimination game against an improved opponent which had gained a lot of self-worth and momentum from its hot start and the weekend draw against what one club official called ‘the gold standard.’
“Knockout games are playoff games,” Smyrniotis said. “It’s pretty simple. It doesn’t matter how you did it-- and I think we did it very well today-- it’s just about winning. But you have to stay calm, you have to stay composed when you go up in the score and also when things don’t go well.”
Another way of describing professionalism.