As most of you know, the St. Patrick’s Day parade is this Saturday in downtown Raleigh. Our club will be marching in the parade and taking part in the celebration at Moore Square afterwards. This is going to be a fun day, and I hope all of you can take part in some aspect of the festivities. Also, it is supposed to rain the next day, so the real craic for St. Patrick’s Day will probably be on Saturday, and you don’t want to miss it.
Here are some details on the parade and the party after for those of you who are planning on heading down:
When and Where to Meet: The parade will assemble at the corner of Lenoir and Wilmington. The parade assembly can get a little chaotic, so make sure you get there a few minutes early so you can track down where they have us located. The best way is to keep an eye open for jerseys, or look for the A.O.H. in their green polo shirts with the embroidered Irish and American flags on the chest (most of them know who we are and that we are marching for the first time and should be helpful). We need to line up at 11:00am at the corner of Wilmington and Lenoir Streets (close to both the Convention Center and Memorial Hall). Parade begins at 12:00pm. We are expecting a fair number out for the parade, so we should be pretty easy to spot.
Where to Park: Both Wilmington and Blount streets are closed off early in the morning, so the parking garage down the hill from the BTI Center is probably your best bet if you want to park near the start of the parade. A better idea may be to try and park near Moore Square and walk down to the parade start from there. With the post parade festivities, it might be better to be parked closer to the end than the beginning. This is a fairly heavily attended event, so getting down there early is not a bad idea.
The Parade Route: Wilmington to Davie, to Fayetteville St, then Edenton to Blount St, and finishing just past Moore Square. Throughout the afternoon there will be live music, food, games and activities in Moore Square. We will have our tent set up either in Moore Square or outside Tir na Nog.
What to Wear: It is supposed to be near 70 and sunny on Saturday, so I would recommend jeans and a light colored shirt. We will have jerseys for everyone to wear. If you have your own jersey, please wear it so we don’t run out! We will have a fair number of marchers who will need a loaner… Aside from that, it will be sunny, so plan accordingly (sunblock, etc.)
How the parade works: We will have our parade banner for the march as well as footballs, hurls, and sliothars. Please use some discretion in how you choose to demonstrate our sports to the masses… we don’t need any errant sliothars flying into the crowd. Basically, we will march behind the banner and have a good time, and have some flyers, etc. for any of the onlookers who may be interested. I have marched in this parade every year since I moved to Raleigh, and I can count on one hand the number of GAA jerseys I saw not worn by me, my wife, or Martin Sullivan along the entire parade route, so there will be a lot of people who are curious, especially with the hurls.
Post-Parade Festivities: The parade ends at Moore Square. There will be lots of tents and vendors just like the run green, but with about ten times as many people. We will have a tent set up there selling t shirts and raffle tickets. We made close to $500 at the run green, and if we can get the same amount of involvement at the parade, we stand to raise a bit more for the club. This is good, because the rent is due on the rugby pitch! Even if you can’t make it to march in the parade, try to get down to Moore Square for the festivities. Saturday will be a much bigger celebration day than Sunday with the parade and state liquor laws on Sundays (and the expected rain on Sunday), so if you are going to come down for the craic, this is the day to do it! Tir na Nog will have a big bash going on right at Moore Square, Nappers will have a full house, and the Hibernian is even setting up something on the Glenwood site to celebrate the day.
Guys – this is a big day for our club with regard to getting our name out there and attracting new players and maybe raising a few dollars to cover expenses for the year. It is also our club’s first St. Patrick’s day (we did not form until April of last year…) More importantly though, this is really meant to be a fun day where we get to show off a little during the parade and then have a good time afterwards. Remember, this is the day that everyone down at the parade wishes to God they were a little more Irish, and we will pretty much be the most Irish thing out there (maybe a draw with the dance schools, but not everyone is cut out to be a dancer, and I really don’t care to see any of you in one of those dresses) and have a good shot at getting potential players fired up about giving a new sport a go. Training starts four weeks after the parade, so this is really the unofficial kickoff to our season.
I hope to see you all down there!
Steve Shannon
Chair
