The first leg, played at 11 a.m. in Forge’s first ever School Day Match with thousands of local children in attendance, was certainly memorable; David Choini\u00e8re brought the crowd alive with a first-half goal, although Montr\u00e9al’s Bryce Duke ensured they’d head back to Quebec on level footing.<\/p>\n
The return fixture was when the real drama started. “A game of two halves” is a too-common clich\u00e9, but this certainly was. Forge came out flying, scoring twice in the first half-hour thanks to Daniel Parra and Kwasi Poku.<\/p>\n
During halftime, however, a thunderstorm rolled into Montr\u00e9al, sending the game into a weather delay that lasted more than two hours. By the time the teams returned to the pitch, Forge’s momentum was gone; they had no choice but to bunker down and try to stop an onslaught from the hosts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They managed to do so, conceding just once to finally \u2014 with their fifth attempt \u2014 get past an MLS opponent in the Canadian Championship.<\/p>\n
Having overcome that mental hurdle, Forge rolled into last year’s quarterfinal meeting with the bleu, blanc et noir\u00a0more confident than ever.<\/p>\n
Forge shut them out in the first leg, taking the lead thanks to Brian Wright’s superb finish late in the second half.<\/p>\n
Leg 2 was a little more theatrical. Montr\u00e9al scored shortly after halftime, tying up the aggregate score and swinging momentum firmly into their favour.<\/p>\n
Until, that is, Tristan Borges and Kyle Bekker had their say.<\/p>\n
A pair of club icons, both of them the architects of plenty of remarkable moments of the years, delivered two more in quick succession.<\/p>\n
Borges, just inside the semicircle above the penalty area, let fly with his left foot and found the back of the net to restore Forge’s lead.<\/p>\n
Three minutes and 10 seconds later, Bekker one-upped his teammate, leathering an even more powerful strike from a couple metres further out than Borges.<\/p>\n
The one-two combo was a potent knockout punch to Montr\u00e9al, who did score late but couldn’t recover from the Hammers’ double blow.<\/p>\n
Wednesday night’s meeting between Montr\u00e9al and Forge will be the sixth, but undoubtedly the most consequential for both sides.<\/p>\n
For Forge, it’s a chance to make history \u2014 and lay groundwork for even more history later this week.<\/p>\n
For Montr\u00e9al, it’s a chance to salvage something from this nightmare season.<\/p>\n
There is now considerable history between these sides, who each year have used the other to test their level.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, one of them will come out of it with a trophy, and another chapter will be written in Canadian soccer’s budding rivalry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first leg, played at 11 a.m. in Forge’s first ever School Day Match with thousands of local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":940763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-940762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}