Having moved from Derry City six months earlier for a second bite at football across the water, he finds his hard graft in the League of Ireland counting for nothing.
Forde's manager, Dave Jones, prefers his goalkeepers to have experience in the English leagues — the Irish equivalent is insufficient preparation in his eyes — leaving Forde to reassess his options with a feeling that his career is turning into a sporting version of Groundhog Day.
The last time he had found himself frozen out in English football he made the move home to his hometown club, Galway United.
However, the League of Ireland was in turmoil, with players going unpaid at a number of clubs, many of whom were on the verge of folding. With a family to support, a return home was too big a risk for Forde. It was Britain or bust. "I had a couple of chances to stay in the Championship but it was likely to be the same story as it was at Cardiff," revealed Forde.
"But at my age it was time to be featuring regularly and getting regular game time. I just needed to go and play.
"I was a bit unfortunate at Cardiff. They were doing well at the time and were on a good run. When I got my chances I felt I performed quite well but it was just one of those things. I would have liked to play more but sometimes you just don't fit into a manager's plans."
Then came an opportunity in the form of League One Millwall. They had been monitoring Forde and were impressed with his few appearances in a Bluebirds shirt. Having been at West Ham in his early 20s, a move back to London was an enticing one.
You may forget, given his weekly rants on television, but Eamon Dunphy was also once a footballer, and the outspoken pundit was at Millwall for almost a decade. When he first arrived back in 1965 he received quite the wake-up call. "The first time I went there I thought: 'Jesus, what have I done?'" Dunphy once recalled. "It wasn't fashionable London, like Fulham or Chelsea. But the noise there was incredible.
Northern clubs thought these southern lads had no bottle, yet there was a do-ordie mentality and aggression running through the place."
That attitude remains at the club to this day and Forde is loving every minute of it. From the peripheries of first-team football in the Welsh capital, the 29-year-old has been an ever-present for the Lions this season as they prepare for the playoffs and a route back to the Championship.
"Regular football was one of my main aims when I came to Millwall last summer," he admits. "The other was to do all I could to get Millwall promoted, and with less than a month to go we're in with a great chance of that happening. "It's good that we've been able to put a run together and put us in with a chance of promotion, be it automatic or through the playoffs.
"We struggled over the Christmas period due to injuries and suspensions, but thankfully we got through that and with three games remaining we're still in with a shout. We narrowly missed out on an automatic spot but we're still in with a chance of promotion through the playoffs, and that's where you want to be."