If you’re looking for a snapshot of Forge FC vs Cavalry FC you’re going to need a wide-angle lens.
Despite the accordion of a CPL season, which saw every team have surges and regressions when the regular-season music finally stopped over the weekend, there were The Hammers and The Cavs where they have so often been: at the top of the table.
Forge, which won the CPL Shield as regular-season champion, hosts Cavalry on Sunday afternoon (4 p.m.) in the 1-v-2 playoff semifinal. The winner proceeds directly to the CPL final on Saturday, Nov. 9, and also gets to host that final which will be broadcast on CBC. The loser waits to host the survivor of the other three playoff teams in the second semifinal.
“The stakes are huge,” says captain Kyle Bekker, the longest-serving Hamilton player. “For one, you’re trying to put yourself in a final, first and foremost. And the added incentive is to host it. We’ve obviously been on both sides of that and it’s definitely a goal of ours.
“They’re fun games to play. Every time you play these games it’s like being a little kid on your front lawn. There’s a trophy on the line, you know the other team is going to come out and compete, you know it’s going to be a battle. It’s a fun 90 minutes.”
Or more. Last year, the two teams met in the finals and it went into an extra period tied 0-0 at Tim Hortons Field, and was eventually decided 2-1 on Tristan Borges’ Olimpico goal in one of the greatest overtime sessions in soccer history: on any continent.
There has arguably been no greater rivalry in Canadian pro sport over the past six years, although it’s been under-appreciated and, definitely, under-reported by mainstream Canadian media.
The numbers are staggering.
This will be the fourth time in the CPL’s six seasons that Hamilton and Calgary have met in the post-season, two of them in the final. In the inaugural season, when it was a two-game final, Cavalry finished first and hosted the second leg after losing 1-0 in Hamilton. But Forge won in Calgary too, also 2-1.
Last year, Forge hosted the final after having to travel to Calgary for the semifinal which they won 2-1 to advance, then beat Cavalry 2-1 in that thriller, when the visitors actually scored the first goal.
And in 2022 Forge eliminated Cavalry with a 3-2 aggregate victory in a semifinal, tying in Calgary before winning at home. They won their third CPL title a week later in Ottawa.
Sunday will be the 31st time, across all competitions, that Forge has played Cavalry. Hamilton has won 14, lost 8 and tied 8 but the cumulative goal differential across the first 30 matches is just five: 36 for Forge, 31 for Cavalry.
“It’s crazy,” says Bekker. “Every time we play each other, it’s always a battle. There’s something to be said for the competitive spirit on each side. Each wants to win because these games matter a lot. There’s a reason that the margins are so slim.
Forge players from other continents, particularly Europe, are shocked when they hear this will be the 31st game in just six years…and remember the two teams only met twice during the Island Games ‘season’ (2020) played in the PEI bubble.
“That’s incredible; 31 games?” said Forge attacker Viktor Klonaridis, who has played first-division soccer in Greece, France and Turkey “They always seem to meet each other in the playoffs.”
Attacker Nana Ampomah, who played in Belgium and Germany is another first-year Forge player who is new to the high frequency of important Forge-Cavalry.
“That’s a lot of games, but the Canadian League is really going strong and these two teams show it,” Ampomah said.
To be sure, teams face each other more often in a small league (eight teams) than they do in Europe or South America, but more than 20 percent of the Hamilton-Calgary games have been outside of the CPL regular season.
By comparison, Italy’s most celebrated rivalry is Inter Milan vs A.C. Milan. They meet regularly in league play, domestic Cups and sometimes in continental play. To find a total of 31 head-to-head games between those two, you have to go all the way back to February of 2013. Eleven-plus seasons worth.
In Spain, the most marquee matchup in the world of football known as the El Classico between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid has taken eleven years to play their last 31 matches against each other. ELEVEN years.
In the English Premier League, the most recent 31 games of the Manchester Derby –which counts all competitions— between City and United date back to 2010. That’s 15 seasons.
So three of the biggest, fiercest head-to-heads on the “continent”, required 11 to 15 years to reach 31 games.
No wonder it’s so intense when the Cavs meet the Hammers. They are ultra-familiar with each other; resentments grow; players react, counter-react, and counter-counter-react because they’ve faced the other team—and their respective individual markers—so often; and there’s always something big on the line.
Jelani Smith, the Forge’s Director of Soccer Operations says that it all started before the league had its first official game, when there was a group training camp involving all seven original CPL teams in the Dominican Republic in early April of 2019.
“We saw Calgary and ourselves emerge from that as the two primary teams and it’s been the same since then,” he said this week.
“There’s never an easy match, there’s always fireworks and for the most part it’s been within one or two goals on the final scoresheet. To me it’s a testament to what they’re doing in Calgary and what we’re doing here, to always be at the top of the hill at the end of the year.”
