The story behind Forge FC

The colour scheme is new, but rooted in local tradition. The name is rooted in local history, but points toward the future.

The intention is that orange, platinum steel and white will combine to identify Forge FC, Hamilton’s entry in the Canadian Premier League, the eight-team pro soccer loop that will make its debut in the spring of 2019.

The club name, logos and colour scheme were introduced to the Hamilton soccer community at a makeshift amphitheatre at the north end of Tim Hortons Field Thursday night.

As of Thursday, Forge FC began taking deposits

(at forgefootball.club) for membership in the Co-Founders Club, which gives members seat selection priority when season tickets go on sale in the fall based upon when they joined. Tickets will start as low as $10 per game, but the upper price range has not yet been set.

For the inaugural season, Tim Hortons Field’s upper decks will be covered by huge tarps, limiting soccer capacity to the 14,000 places in the lower decks and club and suite facilities.

“We wanted to create an intimate environment for soccer,” says Matt Afinec, business president of the Tiger-Cats, who also own Forge FC.

Fans who attended Thursday night’s reveal were directed onto the field through a corridor under the west stands lit by orange lights, and featuring silhouettes of soccer figures on the wall.

They were introduced to, among others, three legendary athletes who played professionally in Hamilton:

• Local product Dave Stala, who starred for the Ticats but was also an all-star soccer player.

• Former Los Angeles Aztec and Canadian International John McGrane, now Forge FC’s vicechair.

• Alex Bunbury, the terrific striker from 1987-90 for the Hamilton Steelers of the former Canadian Soccer League, who went on to a brilliant career in Portugal’s premier division and internationally for Canada.

“The Steelers games were really well-attended (at Brian Timmis Stadium),” Bunbury says.

“The Steelers ultimately didn’t succeed because of the league we were in. This league is much stronger. If they could support us in that kind of environment back then, when you put all this stuff together (sweeping his arm to

indicate the stadium) I think it will be a really big thing here.”

No uniforms (kits, in soccer parlance) were on display because the league is still working on designs for all eight teams, and they’ll be unveiled as a group sometime this fall.

But Hamilton team officials did say they will vary from the new colour scheme by wearing the city’s traditional black and gold at the first June home game every year to honour city teams such the Tiger-Cats, Bulldogs and the old Hamilton Tigers football and hockey clubs and to commemorate Hamilton receiving its city status in June 1846.

The Forge FC name was chosen to play on both the role of the forge in Hamilton’s bedrock mills and foundries, and the city’s evolution toward a more diverse economic base.

“It’s not only a process in steel production — ‘forge’ by definition is perpetually moving forward,” Afinec says.

“The dual meaning is applicable in Hamilton and arguably nowhere else.

“It was apparent to us through our focus groups, both inside and outside the soccer community, that there was a will to develop a new visual identity for this club.”

“Spark Orange” is meant to represent the sparks that come from the strike of a hammer — it’s anticipated that “The Hammers” will become the unofficial nickname for the club — while “Platinum Steel” pays respect to the manufacturing industry and “Waterfall White” signifies the waterfalls in and around the city.

The primary team logo is a stylized H, (for Hamilton, of course) with a modernized three-section spark (one section each for community, city and club), within which is another H.

The secondary logo is a forge hammer, with a six-striped grip, each stripe a community in the greater city: Hamilton, Dundas, Ancaster, Stoney Creek, Flamborough, Glanbrook.

Forge FC will share a number of business and operational staff with the Tiger-Cats, but there are six soccer-specific employees already on staff.

“As a Hamilton guy watching from afar, I think it’s exciting, and Hamilton has proven itself recently as a soccer market,” says former Glendale high school quarterback Derek Martin, who heads the ownership group of the Halifax Wanderers, who’ll also begin CPL play next year.

“The Hamilton group, with Bob Young and Scott Mitchell, has been leading the charge for this league for a very long time.”