Right at the top of the to-do list for Forge FC Sunday afternoon?

Establish a home-field advantage and keep it.

“We have to make sure we take care of business at home,”  Hammers’ Head Coach and Sporting Director Bobby Smyrniotis says as his team prepares to host seventh-place Valour FC at Tim Hortons Field (4 p.m.,  Sunday)  “That’s one of the most important things when you look longterm.

“We need a good performance, we need three points. It’s an easy thing to say, but it’s what we need right now. We’ve been playing some good football, apart from one game this year.”

That one game was not the 3-0 loss in Ottawa — understandable and almost expected, coming in the immediate aftermath of the stunning upset of CF Montréal just a couple of days earlier—but rather the 1-0 to Cavalry FC in Calgary two weeks ago.

The CPL standings are tight, with Forge currently hanging onto the fifth and final playoff spot with 14 points from nine games. Cavalry, which has played one more game, is just a point back but second-place York United,  which has played two more games than Hamilton, is only three points up.

Hamilton has only a decisive 3-0 victory over York in its last six CPL games, to go with two draws and three losses, meaning they’ve left 13 of their last 18 points on the table. That included last weekend’s double-edged sword 2-2 draw in Halifax, where the visitors outplayed the hosts immensely but couldn’t score enough early, let a 1-0 lead turn to a 2-1 deficit and then rallied brilliantly for the tying goal in stoppage time.

Like the winless Wanderers, seventh-place Valour has struggled much of the season, playing their first seven league games all on the road and going winless, including a 2-1 season-opening decision to Forge.

But they mounted a short encouraging run from late May to early June with a draw in Calgary and wins over Halifax and Vancouver before losing their last two, to Atlético and Pacific. In the latter game, they trailed 2-0 but surged back to tie it,  then gave up an own goal to lose. Head coach Philip Dos Santos tore into his team at halftime in that game and they responded.

When encountering a team that’s unsure of itself, it’s imperative to pounce on them early, to reinforce that, as Hamilton did against York and did in most aspects last weekend on the East Coast (link to game here)—other than not scoring enough on their plethora of early chances.

“Of course,” Smyrniotis says. “These are the games you need to make sure you take care of, that you’re at you’re best. With Valour they always have a good game plan against us, a little bit different than the other opponents. They’re usually a bit sharper in their structure defensively and look for opportunities in the game to get just one or two, and they’ve had some success at that. We have to look at how teams set up against us.

“We have to be a little more aggressive and a little more forceful than we have been the last two games.”

Smyrniotis wants his team to stay “in the moment”, and not get complacent when they own the play and even take a lead. If you have a dangerous attack 10 times, he says, make it 20 and you’ll come out ahead.

“Last week in Halifax, we control the game and all of a sudden we’re down 2-1 somehow. You can’t get too high on yourselves in the game when you’re controlling the tempo, and so on, because sometimes that’s what the other team is playing for.”

Two of Valour’s expected scoring powers, Shaan Hundal and Jordi Swibel had the Winnipeg side’s goals in last week’s rally, and for Hundal, it was his first tally of the year. He can get hot though and Forge will have to watch him.

And Forge fans will get their first chance to watch in person winger Nana Ampomah, the talented Ghanaian who has played top-flight football in Belgium and Germany. He made an impressive debut in Halifax last week with a wonderful dribble-fuelled assist and a near-goal of his own.

Smyrniotis agrees with his captain Kyle Bekker that Ampomah’s overdue arrival has given the team an infusion in an already-long season. Remember, Forge returned from a very short off-season to train for and play in the Concacaf Champions Cup in the late winter.

“Six months in and now we get this new burst of energy to the team,” Smyrniotis said. “It’s not only about his quality on the field, it’s that he’s a professional. You can tell that from his background and how he conducts himself in training and how he conducts himself off the field as well and that’s another positive thing in our locker room.”

Smyrniotis says he’s not concerned about the meagre harvest of points from the last six league fixtures.

“Not really, to be honest. We’re six months in and sometimes you find this. We’ve seen this in the past with certain time periods.

“Everything is there for us when you look at the standings. We just need to make sure that when we play these games at home we’re getting maximum points.”