TORONTO — There are a lot of quirks to the Canadian Premier League.
The seven-team circuit, which kicked off last month, features a split season unique to soccer in this part of the world, no playoffs and a handful of new clubs. On Saturday, the league added a pair of firsts when York 9 FC hosted nearby rival Forge FC of Hamilton, Ont.: The teams played on the smallest field allowed in a professional game and experienced the first weather delay in CPL history.
The sun shone brightly for kickoff at York 9's temporary home on the campus of York University in north Toronto, but conditions turned quickly as thunderstorms rolled into the area. At the hour mark, with the teams deadlocked 0-0, the first nearby lightning strike prompted referee Yusri Rudolf to blow the whistle on what ended up being a 75-minute delay as the skies opened up and fans poured out of the stadium.
Watch the Champions League Final June 1 LIVE on DAZN CA
The majority of the spectators never returned, but the skies cleared and Forge took full advantage of the final 30-minute sprint to the finish. Chris Nanco scored off a counterattack in the 70th minute before Tristan Borges cemented the victory with a well-worked 78th-minute strike as the Hamilton club left with a 2-0 victory.
Saturday was a day both teams will remember.
"It's always hard because you start getting into a momentum in the game," York head coach Jim Brennan said of the weather delay. "You've got a rhythm that's in the game. We felt it was coming. The guys were confident and kept on getting forward, then all of a sudden you're told to get in the dressing room because of the rain."
Both teams seemed to take a few minutes coming out of the delay to reacclimate to the speed of the game. Forge assistant coach Peter Reynders described play in the moments immediately following the restart as "searching." Reynders' players, while acknowledging the distraction, were able to find success rather quickly despite the game lasting twice as long as usual.
"It can be [distracting], but we have a good group of guys," Nanco said. "It was a little bit of jokes [in the locker room], but when it came down to it we knew we had to be serious and get back out there and perform."
As if the weather wasn't enough of an issue, the tiny field at York Lions Stadium changed both sides' approach as the players were practically on top of one another with little space to manouever. The pitch was 100 yards by 58 yards, just 8 yards wider than FIFA's minimum dimensions.
The players, however, felt the unique conditions weren't anything they couldn't handle.
"We adjust to it during training, we train up to it and we just get prepared for whatever's going to happen," Borges said of York's field size. "A game is a game, it's between two teams, so I think we handled it well."