Steve Milton: Hamilton Forge FC just keeps ticking off their goals
The longest and most busily successful autumn in the seven-year history of Tim Hortons Field - that includes the fall of 2019, when its two primary tenants won every game they played there - has become even more jam-packed.
And Forge FC coach Bobby Smyrniotis wants it to make it busier and longer.
When the Montreal Alouettes were somehow edged by the wait'll-next-year Ottawa Redblacks Friday night, it meant that the Hamilton Tiger-Cats did not have to win Saturday's home game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders to host the CFL East final next Sunday. But they won it anyway and handily.
So, the Ticats have at least one more game at Tim Hortons Field Game and are still alive to be the geographical, and the real, home team in the Grey Cup here Dec. 12. We'll remind everyone that is technically still the autumn.
And then there's Forge FC. It seems like there's always the Forge, because there always is. They just keep playing and adding on home games, which they did again with Sunday afternoon's 3-1 victory over York United in the Canadian Premier League semifinal at Tim Hortons Field. That made them the host team for the CPL final Dec. 5 (4:30 p.m.)
But, on Wednesday they're playing a game that's just as big - actually, much bigger if you take a more global view of soccer - here when the strong and experienced Honduran side CD Montagua comes into town for the first leg of a home-and-home CONCACAF semifinal. The back end is on the following Wednesday at the national stadium in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.
Win or lose in Honduras, the Forge will hurry back to try for their third straight CPL title, their first at home, four days later at Tim Hortons Field against Victoria's Pacific FC.
But, if they can oust Montagua, they'll advance to the final CONCACAF League final and its two legs are currently scheduled for Dec. 7, and Dec. 14 - two days after the Grey Cup, but still autumn - and one of those dates would be a home game.
Smyrniotis has been a master of lineup tweaking and, critically, in-game substitutions to keep his troops fresh as they head into their 37th match of a season which opened back on the third day of March with training camp. It has traversed a complete lockdown, the first eight of 28 CPL games played in the Winnipeg bubble, sprinting from fourth place to finish first overall, three CONCACAF series wins, numerous quarantines and COVID-19 tests, and a heartbreaking 11th-round shootout loss to CF Montreal in the Canadian Championship semifinal.
Montreal beat Toronto FC Sunday for the national title, but they're now done for the calendar year and Hamilton isn't.
The Forge's publicly-stated goals before the season were to: maintain their iron grip on the CPL title; go deeper into CONCACAF League than they'd ever gone, which was the 2020 quarter-finals; become the first CPL team to graduate to the CONCACAF Champions League.
They're still alive for the first one and have already accomplished the second and third. This team was deliberately constructed to play across three championships - they outplayed Montreal in the Canadian semifinal - but it was CONCACAF that was the major target during the off-season.
So, they brought back Borges and Emery Welshman from 2019 and signed Panamanian Omar Browne and Costa Rican Joshua Navarro who have played CONCACAF-region football all of their lives. And when international veteran David Edgar retired after the 2020 season, they lifted him from the pitch onto the coaching staff.
As an individual, and as a team, you want to play in those (CONCACAF) games," said Borges, who had a goal on Sunday and set up another. It's a lot of exposure as an individual and it's also a lot of exposure for us as a club."
Saturday night Smyrniotis and his staff had already flipped the tactical board" in their offices from YORK UNITED to MOTAGUA and done some analytical looking ahead to Wednesday before they left the stadium which their players had just made even busier.
Right now we've got three games ahead of us. But, the beauty of that is we don't want them to be our last three games. We want to stretch it to five."
Three of which would be at Tim Hortons Field.
This autumn? Of course they would be.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com