What a difference a year makes.
In the first week of May 2024, the HFX Wanderers limped into the first round of the Telus National Championships against CS Saint-Laurent, having lost their first three CPL games, with only one goal.
In the first week of May 2025, the Wanderers stride into the first round of the National Championships without a loss through their first five CPL games, which included Saturday’s 0-0 draw against Forge FC.
Those two teams will tangle again in the single-knockout opening round of the national senior men’s club championship Tuesday night (7 p.m.) at Hamilton Stadium, just four days after their league match.
And HFX Halifax is notching goals. Despite losing last year’s leading scorer Dan Nimick’s eight goals to Forge this season, the Wanderers rank second in the CPL with eight goals, well back of league-leading Ottawa’s 15 but two up on the Forge, who are also undefeated but have drawn each of their last three games.
“It was a dreadful start,” says Wanderers president and founder Derek Martin of 2024, when his club struggled through the first 10 games without a victory on the way to missing the playoffs. “It was one of those situations where it just went from bad to worse. We lost our Canadian Championship game against the semi-pro team from Quebec, which was kind of the nail in the coffin, killing any mojo we had hoped to generate at the start of the year
“So, it’s been a refreshing change this year for sure. We haven’t had this kind of a start in our entire existence. We’ve always been slow starters. A lot of that is because we have to start on the road so much in the first few weeks of the season, because our (natural) grass is never ready early.
“This year we got a couple of wins on the road to kick things off, which just lowers the temperature, allows everyone to relax and play.”
Martin comes out of the “other” football, the gridiron kind. He’s a Hamilton native and starred at quarterback for Glendale Bears, then headed to St. Francis Xavier University, which he led to the 1996 Vanier Cup finals, before getting into event promotion –and eventually the CPL—in Halifax.
Last year, Halifax didn’t get to 11 points—their current total, two up on third-place Hamilton---until July 18. They finished sixth despite an encouraging late run. In the off-season, they made some changes, bringing in former Canadian Men’s National Team player and longtime MLS coach Mark Watson as a Senior Football Strategy Advisor and adding other support staff.
They also infused an offensive dynamism into the flanks that they’d never really had previously, adding French players Lorenzo Callegari and Yohan Baï. They brought in complementary back-end help in 20-year-old defender Adam Pearlman from TFC and CPL-proven centre back Thomas Meilleur-Giguère from Pacific. Meilleur-Giguère saved a goal and probably the game with a great block of a seemingly certain Brian Wright score on Saturday.
Halifax is second in the league in scoring chances but has also tightened up considerably at the other end, allowing just four goals in three games, second-fewest to the miserly three yielded by Forge FC.
Saturday--just the second time in their six-plus seasons of head-to-head competition that Hamilton and Halifax played to a scoreless draw---did not lack for entertaining chances, though. Keepers Jassem Koleilat of Forge and Rayane Yesli of HFX were each forced to make excellent game-preserving saves, and Halifax hit the woodwork twice while Hamilton dinged it once.
Martin pays close attention to the soccer team that carries the flag for his hometown.
“Forge is always great,” he said yesterday. “Bobby (Smyrniotis) and Patrice (HFX coach Patrice Gheiser) go way back, so with those two, you get a game like Saturday’s that’s very strategic and a bit cagey. I expect Wednesday to be a bit similar.”
What is CanChamp?
Similar for sure, but not the same. This one is Hamilton’s home game, and there is a difference between a single-knockout tournament game and a long CPL season. Both sides would desperately like to advance to play MLS side CF Montréal in the next round: Hamilton because they eliminated Montréal last year and it’s a quickly growing rivalry; Halifax because of their unexpected exit from the tournament last year and because a number of their players have Quebec roots.
“It’s a little weird going right back against the same team, but it’s a different competition, so it will add spice to it,” says Forge midfielder Ali Hojabrpour, who’s off to a good start this season. “Knockout football adds a little edge to the game. Every play matters to the maximum in these types of games when just one goal can make such a difference.
“Competitive is the best way to describe our game against them on Saturday. A point away from home is never a bad thing. Everyone thinks Halifax and Forge just want to play on the ball, but I think both teams know that if you’re defensively strong, you can win championships based on that defence. I think it was a testament to both teams that we know we have to defend in these games.”
Game officials missed a clear Halifax handball early in the match, but Hammers’ head coach and technical director Bobby Smyrniotis, while not thrilled with the non-call, dismisses that as part of the game.
Some casual fans might not be able to understand how soccer players and insiders can separate multiple competitions and could assume that Saturday’s game in Halifax and Wednesday night’s game here are the same animal, less than 100 hours apart. They aren’t.
One of Forge’s primary goals is to get back to Champions Cup play for a fourth time, and the winner of the Canadian Championship gets the Voyageurs’ Cup and its automatic berth in the Concacaf Champions Cup. The CPL regular-season winners and the playoff winners also get Concacaf berths, but those are longer-term propositions.
“One hundred percent,” Smyrniotis agrees. “The Cup is the Cup. We’ve done quite well in this competition over the years, and we want to make sure we keep on doing well. It’s much different than just three points in front of you when players know there are another three points ahead. This one is a game without another one: you win, you move on.”
You lose, and you don’t move on. Sudden-death.
Forge will be searching for a little more in the opponent’s end as the team which led the entire CPL in scoring last year—despite unexpected striking sensation Kwasi Poku’s summer transfer to Europe—hasn’t been creating enough quality chances near the opponent’s goal and hasn’t converted enough of the solid opportunities they have orchestrated.
‘Scoring is always the hardest part of the game, and we have a lot of new players who maybe need to gel a little more over time,” Hojabrpour says. “I think we’re creating and getting in the right areas; we just need to figure out the final finish and put the ball in.”
His head coach saw it through the same lens.
“I thought we did a very good job on the ball in Halifax, and defensively we were very good,” Smyrniotis said. “We just didn’t have enough punch in that final third of the pitch.
“We did everything very well in the first two-thirds. Maybe we lacked being a little aggressive in the final third, and the moments we were aggressive, we created some good opportunities. A couple of good ones off open play, a couple of good ones off set pieces.
So, it gives us a lot of confidence going into this game on Wednesday.”