York United fall 2-0 Forge, season is over despite one game remaining

October 5, 2022 · 0 Comments

By Robert Belardi

A lot had to happen for York United to make the post-season, and over the course of the past few weeks, despite three wins in their previous five games, things didn’t go according to plan.

The Nine Stripes, who fell 2-0 on the road to Forge FC over the weekend, now sit 10 points out of the final playoff spot held by reigning champions Pacific FC.

In a remarkable turn-around in the latter half of the Canadian Premier League season, it was most certainly a case of too little, too late for York United.

Heading into this bout, the Nine Stripes came out guns blazing in the first half taking lots of chances and pinning Forge FC’s back against the wall.

But as an experienced side does, Forge crawled back into the game and immediately took over, resulting in two goals, 15 minutes apart, in the second half by Malik Owolabi-Belewu and Aboubacar Sissoko.

“I thought we started really well. We were good for the first 30 minutes. Decent for the first half, we gave them a few long-range efforts. Second half, I thought we got stuck a bit deep. We knew they would come out – because they wanted three points badly – but two set-piece goals in the end. Disappointing from a coaching standpoint because we know they play short a lot. We had a game plan and we had to execute a game plan against their short set piece. That was frustrating,” said head coach Martin Nash, in the post-match press conference.

“There’s a lot of ups and downs in a year. Like you’ve seen in today’s game, it was up and down. I guess you could summarize our season that way. But again, we have one more game to play and we’re going to bring everything to that game. Finish on a high. There’s still a lot to play for. Everybody is still trying to fight for contracts moving forward. We’re just looking forward to the next game now,” said defender Dominick Zator.

As we move into the playoffs, we know one thing is for certain: Atlético Ottawa has secured first place on the year.

But the next three spots are all up for grabs. Forge FC sits in second with 44 points and Cavalry FC is in third place tied on 44 points as well. Pacific FC, in fourth, has 43 points as of press time this week.

We’ll have to wait and see how this pans out in the final week of the season.