For the first time, the CPL Shield is heading to Hamilton, Ontario.

Forge FC officially clinched the regular season title on Sunday, beating Valour FC 1-0 on the road at Princess Auto Stadium to confirm their spot atop the table with two matches still to play before the playoffs kick off later this month. The Hammers will have home-field advantage throughout the postseason and have also booked their spot in the 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup.

The Shield is the latest addition to a trophy cabinet at Tim Hortons Field that already includes four playoff titles — won across the CPL’s first five seasons prior to 2024. No team in league history has enjoyed success quite like the Hammers, who won the inaugural CPL Final in 2019 and repeated as champions in 2020. They fell to Pacific FC in the 2021 final, but responded by winning again in 2022 and 2023, always finding a way to peak at the right time and end the season with a trophy.

When the CPL Shield was introduced for regular season winners in 2022, it became another trophy for CPL clubs to win alongside the playoffs’ North Star Shield, which was replaced last year by the brand new North Star Cup. Forge became the first club to lift the latter trophy last year, hoisted into the Hamilton sky by the club’s day one captain Kyle Bekker.

Atlético Ottawa and Cavalry FC won the first two CPL Shields, but both of them were beaten by Forge in the last match of the season, the CPL Final. Now, it’s the Hammers who have their hands on the first trophy of the season. If they can continue their playoff dominance, they will become the first club in CPL history to win both trophies in the same year.

“It’s not something we sit and talk about, ‘We’re going to want to win this, we want to win that’,” said former Canadian international David Edgar, who has been with the club since 2019, first as a player and now as an assistant coach. “I think we, over the course of five years now at Forge, have built an identity that it’s expected here.

“You come into this dressing room and you walk past the trophy cabinet and you realize ‘Okay, you have to come here and it’s expected to win’, and with that is a little bit of extra pressure. I say to Kyle Bekker, ‘Pressure’s for tires, right?’, and it’s what you put on yourself, and this is what we play the game for as players and coaches, and the opportunity to lift trophies and be successful.”

Just four players have been with the club since 2019: Bekker, Alexander Achinioti-Jönsson, David Choinière, and Dom Samuel. Tristan Borges and Elimane Cissé were part of the club’s early success before leaving and then coming back, with Borges firmly in this season’s Player of the Year conversation.

Achinioti-Jönsson, the 2022 CPL Defender of the Year has seen it all in Hamilton, and admitted that he never thought he’d be in Canada for this long, or do as much winning as the club has. He holds the CPL’s all-time appearance record, and has been a key player since day one.

“I think it’s the day-to-day work, the professionalism of the club, the players are bought into an idea and really have a good bond,” he told CanPL.ca when asked what has led to such consistency over six years. “I think that’s what our foundation is and we’re just willing to sacrifice everything to win. I think we just manage to come together as a group in the important moments and just grind that out.”

Edgar also says the group takes motivation from the people who make up the fabric of the club beyond the playing and coaching staffs. Whether it’s people who work in the club’s offices, those working at the stadium, or the fans — Forge’s identity also comes from a culture off the field of wanting to be the best.

When those responsible for what happens on the pitch take notice, they know they are representing more than themselves.

“You’ve got all the stuff you need here, and they have given us that and more,” Edgar said. “That comes in spades of support from from the higher-ups, from the ticket sales, from every single person. Football is a funny game where you don’t spend a lot of time at places, so when you do get an opportunity to stay here, myself for six years, and you get to build relationships for not just the players and the coaching staff, but the people who sell the tickets, security guards, and things like that.

“I’d love to be able to bring [trophies] home for those people.”

Leading the way throughout Forge’s history has been head coach and sporting director Bobby Smyrniotis.

Smyrniotis has been involved with the club since day one as well, and has now guided the Hammers to five trophies in six seasons, with one more still to play for in 2024. As a result of his team’s success he has been linked with Major League Soccer jobs, as well as that of the Canadian men’s national team, for years now, but remarkably has never won the CPL’s Coach of the Year award — something that could very well change in 2024.

Smyrniotis will be the first person to tell you that he isn’t particularly bothered by individual accolades, however, especially as his team’s trophy cabinet continues to grow every year.

“I don’t think people are at Forge FC to win individual awards, they’re here to win trophies and it’s the same for me, I don’t really care about winning any individual awards, it’s a team sport,” said Achinioti-Jönsson. “I want to contribute as much as possible to the team, I think everyone’s bought into that and everyone just wants what’s best for the team.

“Do I think he deserves to be Coach of the Year over the last six years? Yeah, probably one or two times, but again, I think the success we’ve had speaks for itself so as long as we’ve had success, we can’t really complain about this person not winning. We know we’re solid as a team, we know what we’ve done, and we’re happy with that.”

Edgar says he has seen the last few seasons as one of Smyrniotis’ assistant coaches as an apprenticeship, a chance to learn from one of the top coaches in the country.

“I learn every day being in and around this fantastic coaching staff,” he said. “I haven’t learned Greek yet, but it’s coming along. You learn about different styles of play, you play against MLS teams, you play against Liga MX teams, you play against CPL teams, who you know a lot about and you have seen them and you play against them more.

“It does bring a little bit of, ‘Okay, how are we going to do it this week?’, and that type of thing. We learn as we go here and I think that’s life and that’s football. You gotta constantly be open to it, and have that growth mindset.”

In addition to their success in the CPL over the years, the Hammers have gone on deep runs in continental and domestic cup competitions, flying the flag for the Canadian Premier League across North America. They went deep in the Concacaf League in 2020 and 2021, with a semifinal appearance in the latter edition seeing them become the first CPL side to qualify for the Champions Cup.

Most recently they and Cavalry FC played in the 2024 Champions Cup, as a result of winning the North Star Cup and CPL Shield, respectively. Forge were knocked out by Mexican giants Chivas Guadalajara, while Cavalry fell to MLS side Orlando City SC.

It’s a stage that the Hammers are eager to get back to, and by winning the CPL Shield have confirmed their spot for next season.

“From year one, when we were in the Concacaf League, you saw our debut and we struggled a lot, and then two, three years in we made a lot of progress, and I feel the same now when we played Chivas compared to when we played Cruz Azul two years ago,” said Achinioti-Jönsson. “I think we put up a good performance both home and away. Obviously these are good teams, and it’s hard to get away with a result, but I think it’s important for us to take our next step as a club, both on the pitch and off the pitch.”

“It doesn’t matter where you are in world football, you want to play against the best and compete against the best, and that’s the Champions Cup for us,” added Edgar. “To qualify for that, whichever way we can do it, is one of our main aims, and to play against those teams and bring those teams here to Tim Hortons Field on a cold January, February evening, it’s special. It’s real special for this country and what this league is bringing and these memories that we’re creating here.”

Achinioti-Jönsson says that playing continental football is something that he dreamed of growing up in Sweden, and an experience he may not have ever had if he didn’t made the leap across the Atlantic to sign for Forge ahead of the inaugural CPL campaign.

“I didn’t know much about the league other than Forge when I when I came over, so I didn’t really know what to expect of Canadian football, whatsoever,” he said. “It’s taught me a lot, and getting these experiences like playing in the Champions Cup is huge, because if you go play in Europe, you can play your entire life without ever playing a continental game.

“It’s very tough to play those games, so being able to come over here and get those experiences is phenomenal and I’m very happy I made the decision.”

With only a handful of matches left in the 2024 season no matter how far the Hammers go in the playoffs, Edgar wants the players to savour every minute together and make the most of their opportunity to create even more history together. His own career ended in 2020 with a second consecutive CPL title, going out on top.

“Honestly, play with a smile on their face,” he said when asked what he wants to see from his side in the final weeks of the season. “I try to reiterate to them that you just never know when it could be your last game, you just truly never know whether that’s at Forge, whether that’s in the CPL, or in North America, or football in general at all. You just never know.

“Make the most of it, enjoy these last couple weeks of the season, don’t wish for the offseason and just be in the moment.”