All told, the first round of The Island Games wasn’t particularly troublesome for Forge FC.

They went 3-3-1, losing only to York9 FC, they scored more goals than anyone else, and they clinched their position in the top four before the rest of the second-round group did, meaning their weekend wasn’t nearly as stressful as it was for others.

Now, coach Bobby Smyrniotis is sizing up the next three matches to come against HFX Wanderers FC on Wednesday, Pacific FC, and Cavalry FC, and he’s happy with where his team is so far.

“You look at the first seven games, in many ways, it was our way to experiment, our way to see what works, what players are in what condition, especially when you don’t come into this with any games beforehand,” Smyrniotis told reporters on Tuesday.

“We had a plan that we thought would work to get us to the second round, we’re happy we were able to punch our ticket first and have this past weekend off from having a stressful match. Now it’s just a matter of 100 per cent focus. We’ve seen what’s worked well in that first round, we’ve seen where we can be better, and I think we’ve got a lot more in the engine.”

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Forge has tinkered a little with the attacking setup, with players such as Marcel Zajac, Monti Mohsen, David Choinière, and Kadell Thomas all taking turns on the wings. They’ve managed to rotate players such as Kwame Awuah and Maxim Tissot around from fullback to midfield positions, and they’ve been relatively stable in their possession and ball movement.

However, Smyrniotis added that he’s seen his squad take the foot off the pedal for stretches of games, which they’ll need to eradicate in this unforgiving group stage.

“I think we’ve been very good in the bulk of our games,” he said. “I think what we need to do is not have down moments in the game, where there’s maybe 10 to 15 minutes in a half where we slow our pace down in possession or sometimes concede possession. … I don’t think we’ve seen the best version of this team, I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of some individual players, and sometimes that’s a scary thing because I think we’ve been pretty good in the first round.”

Forge’s first challenger is HFX Wanderers, who fought hard for a 1-1 draw with the champions in the first round. Although Smyrniotis feels his side was the better of the two on that day (indeed, they did have more possession and chances), he’s seen some good football played by Stephen Hart’s men at The Island Games.

Smyrniotis pointed out that there have been several different versions of HFX, depending on whether or not they choose to play with a high press (which they did to great effect in some games, but chose not to do against Forge).

“They’re a team that will concede possession, they’ll give up space, they’ll give up the ball, and they like to counter-attack. They’ve got speed up front,” Smyrniotis said.

He added that, although the Wanderers are never too concerned about how much possession they have in a game, it’s something Forge will be focusing on.

“For Halifax it makes sense, they’re a counter-attacking team, and that’s simple to see. If you look at where their goals are coming from, they’re coming from the counter-attacks. Possession is important for us because we don’t like sitting in our own half watching another team play football, and that’s just a philosophical thing. We like to entertain, we like to play a good brand of football,” Smyrniotis said.

Above all, Smyrniotis is preaching to his players that there’s really no room for error in these three group stage matches. He quipped that every game, from here on, is effectively a final.

The good news is that Forge have played in one of those before. And it went pretty well last time.