The first game of Euro 2012 broke with the tradition for the opening night of a major football tournament. It was breathlessly entertaining.

If Poland and Greece's 1-1 draw in Warsaw’s National Stadium set the tone for the next month, the stadium paramedics will be working overtime to keep pulse rates down.

Goals, two sending-offs and contentious refereeing decisions aplenty. It was not meant to be like that. We are used to dreary introductions to tournament football.

Poland’s principal striker Robert Lewandowski gave the co-hosts a deserved lead but, despite being reduced to 10 men for more than 47 minutes, Greece not only equalised through substitute Dimitris Salpingdis, they will feel they should have won when Arsenal’s Polish goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny - who endured a personal nightmare - was dismissed after 68 minutes.

From the resulting penalty, substitute keeper Prezymyslaw Tyton pushed away a Giorgos Karagounis strike. The roars from the 50,000 crowd, thankful to have preserved parity, underlined the shocking shift in momentum in the second half.