You'd be hard-pressed to devise much higher pressure or more highly anticipated opening World Cup matches, with underdogs playing for national pride and former World Cup winners who had earned the ire of not only their opposition but their own supporters during their stuttering qualifications playing now for redemption.

Dressed in Australian-like colours, the underdog South Africans might have looked cheery with their choreographed sort of warm-up, but the dancing belied the fact that they were desperate not to be the first host nation to lose their opening match facing off against what's being reported as the best Mexican team ever.

Following them was a match between two teams — Uruguay and France — whose commonality included not just the fact that they were both former World Cup champions of the world, but also that they had both made it into the final 32 by the barest, skin-of-their-teeth qualifying margins.

And, after years of World Cup footballing drought, the opening two matches didn't disappoint. Instead they gave us a taste of all the World Game's pinnacle tournament goodness and hinted at the flair, oddness, and controversy that is sure to follow.

There was the giant dung beetle that corralled the equally giant football in the opening ceremony, which can be categorised as it-must-hold-significance-for-the-host-nation bizarre.

There was the much-discussed Jabulani, an aerodynamically engineered game ball that, if reports are to be believed, seems to have a trajectory with a mind of its own and that scares the bejeepers out of goalkeepers and players who will be made to look foolish by it alike.

There was the acrobatic, heroic, Mark Schwarzer-ilk South African goalkeeper, Itumeleng Khune, who kept the South Africans solid, and whose opposing counterpart at the other end of the pitch, Diego Perez, weighs in at a not-much-taller-than-me (and I'm short) 5 ft 7".

There were haircuts that varied wildly between girl-like long curls and side-shaved Mohawks, lots of finger waggling in disagreement with referees' and linesmen's all-powerful, irreversible decisions, and coaches who went from impassive to impassioned in a millisecond.

Then there were maths lessons that two yellows equal a red, when Nicolas Lodeiro was sent off for two dangerous tackles in quick succession and left Uruguay with 10 men for the last 10 minutes.

There were handballs that went unrewarded (or punished, depending on how you look at it), including one by a Uruguayan defender in the box that most Irish fans would consider a kind of World Cup qualification karma for France.

There were complaints of foul play which were shown, in the replay, to be the fault not of the accused offender but the offendee (Case in point: the complaint that an elbow was raised by the South African captain. Not only was there no raised elbow, the complaining player was actually effectively pushing his face into the South African player's chest and then, ickily, armpit.).

And if anyone doubted the hometown lift, they should check out Siphiwe Tshabalala's stellar, fast-break, cross-goal 55th-minute screamer that might yet be a contender for one of the best goals of the tournament.

That both games ended in draws (1-1 South Africa vs Mexico and 0-0 Uruguay vs France) means that everyone's definitely still in the running in Group A. Bring on Day 2 of the World Cup. Bring on England vs USA.