With all the focus on crowd trouble, violence, English hooligans, French police and Russian thugs, its been easy at times to forget that there is a football tournament going on in France, not some kind of European war.

The scenes of riot police and chairs being thrown and the horror  of a handful of fans being left with life threatening injuries after clashes in Marseilles, Lille and Lens have grabbed the headlines, which is only to be expected.

But on the field there have been a series of fascinating matches, not all turning out as expected.

Some pundits predicted that the expansion of the tournament to 24 teams (from the previous 16) would lead to a diminution in quality and some poor quality games.

Some even worried that there would be mismatches which would distort the group stages, with teams like the lowly rated Northern Ireland and Hungary and first time qualifiers Albania and Iceland in the draw alongside powerhouses like Germany, France and Portugal.

How wrong that has turned out to be.

Northern Ireland might not have looked too good against Poland in their opening game, a 1-0 defeat.

But no-one could accuse Michael O'Neill, their manager, of not being bold: in the second game against Ukraine he made five changes and his bravery was rewarded with a 2-0  win that gives Northern Ireland every chance of making it through to the next phase, depending on their performance against Germany.

The fact that there are so few fully professional players operating at the highest level in the Northern Ireland set up is a remarkable tribute to their achievement; and there was an Australian connection as Aaron Hughes, who spent most of the last A-League season on the treatment table at Melbourne City, was one of those new faces brought in by O'Neill for the Ukraine game.

The 36-year-old was released by John Van 't Schip at the end of an A-League campaign where he hardly featured, yet here he was, able to do a job against high quality players in a major international tournament

It was a similar story where Iceland were concerned when they took on Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portuguese team-mates.

The Icelanders had never qualified for a major tournament before and have an even smaller population of top level players than Northern Ireland.

Yet they were able to come back from a one-goal deficit against the Portuguese and equalise in the second half to get a 1-1 draw and give themselves a springboard to qualification.

Ronaldo was not best pleased, saying that the Icelanders were a poor team and lacked any adventure, simply trying to defend to stay in the game.

Well he might say that. But as one of the Icelanders reflected afterwards, what did the petulant Real Madrid star expect - for Iceland to play like Barcelona? And, the view from the north was less than complimentary, with some in the Icelandic camp suggesting that the preening superstar all too often fell over and tried to look for free kicks.

The Albanians haven't offered an awful lot in the way of attacking prowess - perhaps a call to Melbourne Victory's Besart Berisha might not have been the worst idea - but they have shown that resilience and defensive organisation can take a team a long way.

They had a man sent off early against Switzerland but only lost 1-0, and then held hosts France goalless until stoppage time in their match, only conceding twice in the dying moments.

Italy and France were amongst the first teams to cement qualification with two wins in their opening games , but the manner in which they did so was wildly different.

The French have not looked that impressive, scoring a late winner in a 2-1 victory over Romania in the tournament opener before an even later finale against the Albanians.

Italy were good value for their 2-0 win over the disappointing Belgians and Antonio Conte's side kept up the good work with a 1-0 win over Sweden, thanks to another late goal _ late strikes having been a feature of the early matches in this tournament.

That was certainly the case for the Czechs, who came back from a 2-0 deficit to force a 2-2 draw with the impressive Croats thanks to a stoppage time penalty. Had the Croatians won that they would have ensured qualification.

So far the Italians, well organised and playing with plenty of spirit,  look like a team that could go all the way, but it is usually folly to make predictions based on the first couple of games.

And what of England, about whom there is inevitably a mountain of hype and massive media focus _ never mind the acres of column inches and hours of broadcast footage of the activities of their fans.

England were good against Russia and should have won that game comfortably, letting in a late leveller. Fate worked the other way in their match against Wales, Daniel Sturridge's stoppage time strike giving them a 2-1 win  after Gareth Bale had put the Welsh in front.

So with the tournament heading into the final phase of the group stage there is plenty to like about what we have seen so far, certainly in terms of competitiveness. It might not always be vintage football, but it is close and at this stage several sides will fancy their chances of making progress. From a neutrals point of view, that has to be a good thing.