His grandfather was a steelworker.
So it’s fitting that Antoine Batisse, the imposing centre back who was a legend in southwest France, has landed with Forge FC and will be in the lineup for a big game right off the bat.
“I didn’t know Hamilton was a steelworkers’ town before I signed,” says the 6-foot-1 midfielder and centre back, who was born in the Paris suburb of Versailles but was raised in western France. “So it’s very nice for me to arrive in a place that has that connection for my family.
“And my grandfather worked on a forge…a ‘forge’.”
He says this as he points to the stylised H, meant to frame a steel mill forge, on the left side of his Hammers’ jersey.
Batisse adds more experience, height and soccer intelligence to a Forge backline that sees the return of veteran Daniel Krutzen, the second Forge season for 2025 CPL Defender of the Year Dan Nimick and Marko Jevremović, plus holdovers Rezart Rama, Ben Paton and Elimane Cissé.
“It’s good to have good players like this around me, and I’ve integrated well,” Batisse said through assistant coach Johan Albert, one of several French-speakers on the Forge roster and staff. “Even if I’m a bit older than some of them, we are still really close. It doesn’t make a big difference in how we think or who we are.
“It’s always interesting for a player to sign with a big club like Forge and obviously it’s very important to continue with this great defensive record.”
Batisse graduated from the youth leagues of local club Chamois Niortais onto their senior team as a 19-year-old, spent a year on loan to French second division side Boulogne and then joined Pau, located near the Pyrenees foothills, and became a key part of the club’s promotion to the second tier of French football. He spent nearly eight seasons there and became the club’s iconic captain before being injured and moving to a third-tier club and then over to IMT in Serbia’s Super League for two years before Forge signed him.
“We had talks with him last year and for various reasons it didn’t happen but the communications stayed open and the opportunity came up this season so we were able to bring him over,” says Bobby Smyrniotis, Forge’s head coach. “He’s a player with a lot of experience, a player who can play different roles on the pitch as a defender or as a midfielder which is important in our league where you need guys who are versatile.”
Batisse says coming to Forge was a good opportunity for him, his wife Sarah and their two daughters Julia (who’s 2) and Emma (four months). They like to travel but “the main focus is the soccer. If you can, through soccer, discover something different, a new country, a new culture, it’s always interesting.
“The fact that we have French-speaking people in the locker room makes it easier to arrive and integrate, but I also want to improve my English so it’s good for me to work on it here too.
“It’s good to discover this country with my family and be part of Forge which is a good club with a big background. And it’s also very important for me to play in the Concacaf Champions Cup.”
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In that Cup, he’ll be going directly up against Los Tigres, and their legendary 40-year-old striker André-Pierre Gignac, who played a few games himself in Pau but is better known for his 300 Ligue 1 appearances and 105 goals for French sides Lorient, Toulouse and Marseille, and his last 13 years with Los Tigres, where he’s scored 192 goals. Gignac also has 36 caps for France.
“I used to watch André-Pierre Gignac all the time on TV when he was in Toulouse and Marseille,” he recalls. “There was a documentary on him in France so I discovered Los Tigres through that documentary. He’s a legend and he played first in Lorient which has the same colours as us (Forge).
“Tigres is a big club in Mexico, there’s a lot of good fans and it’s always nice to play in a stadium packed with a good atmosphere.”
Although he spent a couple of seasons in Serbia where there were many cold games he has never played in conditions where the temperature dipped below minus 5 Celsius so Tuesday night will be an eye-opener. But he has three days of outdoor practice at Hamilton Stadium to get his body, and lungs, at least a little used to the cold.
And it’s more time to continue weaving himself into the fabric of the deep Hamilton rearguard.
“Beyond his skill he is a fantastic leader,” Smyrniotis said. “In his first couple of weeks on the team he’s meshed right in, not only in what he’s done on the pitch but as a voice with the players.
“It’s important to have those voices, and we have them, especially on the backline with him and Dan Nimick and Daniel Krutzen who was always vocal in a positive way and adding guys like Marko and Rama.
“What was a strong backline last year looks like it could be even stronger.”