Jason Hills
FC Edmonton Communications

HAMILTON — With a lot of youth and inexperience on their side, FC Edmonton knows there will be some challenging days on the pitch.
They certainly learned some tough lessons in their first road match of the season as they dropped a 3-0 decision to Forge FC on Saturday afternoon at Tim Hortons Field.

“If we’re being brutally honest, which we should be, it was men against boys today. I think we looked timid. I think we looked anxious,” said FC Edmonton head coach Alan Koch.
“It was a lesson, and with a young group like we have, we’re going to go through lessons like this. This won’t be the last game that we have like this, this year. But we need to learn and grow from it.”

FC Edmonton falls to 0-2-1 on the season, while Forge FC improves to 1-1-1.

Forward Terran Campbell scored twice, and helped set up Tristan Borges’ first goal of the season just before halftime as Forge scored two goals, just 11 minutes apart to put the Eddies into a 2-0 hole at the break.
Campbell’s first goal came off a penalty kick in the 34th minute, and he added another in the 69th minute as Forge FC found another gear offensively, that FC Edmonton had no answer for.
It was a rough day for the Eddies, offensively as they failed to get a shot on goal, and while they held their own for the first 30 minutes, Forge FC’s experience allowed them to eventually break through.

“I knew we’d have to come here and have to defend, but when you defend, you hope to get the ball at some stage,” said Koch.
“I thought we got the ball at some strategic moments in the first half, but we gave it away, way too easily, and that just compounds the problem.”

Forge FC dominated the ball possession (68.8% – 31.2%) and once they found a way to break through on their opening goal, they took the momentum away and gave FC Edmonton no chance to rip it back.
Their experience showed in their first victory of the season.

“We’ve challenged the players now to reflect when we get back to Edmonton. Tell us what you’ve learned from this exercise, because it was a challenge, and we didn’t come close to anything today,” said Koch.
“I thought we made a lot of mistakes on the goals, and when you come to a place like this, you’ll get punished. That’s the reality of the business.”

Forge opened the scoring on a penalty kick goal from Campbell after Eddies midfielder Simon Triantafillou was given a yellow card in the box for a high kick. Eddies goalkeeper Andreas Vaikla made an incredible stop on the original shot from Campbell, but the rebound landed right back to Campbell, who made no mistake a second time.
That’s when the momentum started to shift.

“We did a lot of chasing throughout the game. They were having a tough time breaking us down, but the momentum after that penalty, they took off with it, and we didn’t bounce back like we usually do,” said FC Edmonton defender Cale Loughrey.

Despite being down by their largest deficit of the season, the Eddies looked to try and pry away the momentum away from Forge in the second half.
Koch made his first substitutions in the 57th minute, and forward Mamadi Camara, who was making his season debut, looked to cut his team’s deficit in half, but his goal was ruled offside, and that signalled it clearly wasn’t going to be the Eddies day as they were on the wrong side of both calls.
Now, FC Edmonton needs to regroup and take all they learned from this tough loss and move forward.

“In the moment, I wasn’t sure. I looked at the replay, and I thought it probably was a penalty kick, but when Mamadi scored, was it offside? I didn’t think so… there were some interesting moments in the game,” said Koch.
“Coming in and playing in places like this are going to pose big challenges for us. We’re a very young group, and we’re going to learn from this. It’s a long season, and this is an opportunity for us to grow.”