The stunning success of the Galway/Dublin Irish Hurling match at Fenway Park has left its imprint on the old ballyard at the Fens.
There was a definite tint of Irish green there last November as almost 30,000 spectators watched the hurlers on a rainy Sunday afternoon just hours after the stadium was packed for a Saturday night match football game between Boston College and the “Fighting Irish” squad from Notre Dame.

And while the park’s characteristic décor has been described as “Fenway Green,” and its iconic left field wall is known as the “Green Monster,” the news comes this St Patrick’s Day that Fenway will join other landmark sites around the world to be illuminated in Irish green for St. Patrick’s Day.

It’s all part of “Global Greening,” Tourism Ireland’s world-wide marketing campaign which will see some of the world’s most famous attractions and sites going green to mark traditional March 17 celebrations. And this year, also for the first time, Irish Network/Boston president Sean Moynihan says, some 500 IN/Boston members will celebrate the season on Friday night, March 18 party, at Fenway’s EMC Club.

In announcing the Fenway greening, Ireland’s tourism minister, Paschal Donohoe, said: “St Patrick’s Day presents a unique and wonderful opportunity to promote Ireland worldwide. From a tourism perspective, it comes at a perfect time when many people are starting to plan their annual holidays.

“The Global Greening initiative is an excellent way to position Ireland in people’s minds and to get them thinking about paying us a visit. People everywhere – even those with no obvious connection to Ireland – demonstrate a strong affinity with St Patrick’s Day, with parades and celebrations taking place in countries right across the world.”

Fenway will join Rome’s Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and Sacré-Cœur Basilica in Paris in going green on the saint’s day. New ‘greenings’ this year include New York’s World Trade Center, Paris’s Place de la Concorde Big Wheel, and City Hall in Tel Aviv.

“Spanning Great Britain, mainland Europe, North, and Australia, as well as developing markets such as China, India and South Africa, the Global Greening is seen from Nelson’s Pillar in London to the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, with new sites being added each year,” Minister Donohoe said. “I want to congratulate Tourism Ireland for their excellent work in securing such an impressive and widespread list of landmarks going green and I look forward to seeing the new additions lighting up for the first time.”

 Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland, said: “This is the seventh year of Tourism Ireland’s Global Greening progam and each year I am delighted to see even more well-known attractions and landmark sites wishing to get involved and join our St. Patrick’s celebrations.

 “The success of our Global Greening initiative is due in no small part to the great work that has been carried out across the world by Irish people down the generations and, in particular, to the great support we’ve received from the Irish embassy network and the diaspora. The eagerness of cities and countries everywhere to take part underlines the strength of the deep connection that people all over the world feel to Ireland. More than 70 million people around the world claim links to the island of Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day is a truly unique opportunity to reconnect them with their heritage.

All of which means “there will be saturation coverage of the island of Ireland across the airwaves, in newspapers and digital media – and that’s an invaluable boost at this time of year for our overall tourism marketing drive in 2016.”