As England rode their luck against Ukraine to pass into the quarter finals of Euro 2012, over half a million tweets were made during the game.

Key peaks were prodigal Rooney’s open goal miss at 27 minutes, followed by what would become his decisive 47 minute goal which generated over 50,000 tweets in the following five minutes alone.

Surprisingly John Terry’s contentious goal-line scramble in the 62nd minute failed to drive up average tweets per minute. Clearly, most viewers were happy not to dwell on the disallowed goal, on social media at least.

However, Terry was the 2nd most tweeted player after Rooney who dominated the conversations. England tweets appeared to outplay Ukraine by two to one.

Increasing Twitter volume around key TV events clearly demonstrates viewers want to engage so that they can be closer to TV content with their friends and peers. This trend is backed up by recent Kantar futurePROOF research that suggests 26% of Adults claim to have discussed TV content online at the same time as watching TV programmes/events.

Scott Thompson is Digital Research Manager, Starcom MediaVest Group