As the Victory and Sydney opened the new season with a scoreless, but entertaining, draw in front of more than 40,000 fans at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night, the Roar were quietly back doing what they do best - winning games and playing beautiful football in the process.
The Roar exhibited patience and class in a 1-0 win over Central Coast at Suncorp Stadium to suggest the off-season loss of key players, including captain Matt McKay, won't necessarily stop them from remaining the competition's benchmark.
Mitch Nichols' winner took the Roar's record unbeaten streak to 29 matches and left coach Ange Postecoglou optimistic about maintaining his team's high standard.
Most pleasing to Postecoglou was the performance of his recruits; the likes of Issey Nakajima-Farran, Besart Berisha, Matthew Jurman and Kofi Danning suggesting they will fit well into the champions' set up.
"The new players did their job, they added to what we've established here and hopefully from our point of view, when they get a little more settled, there will be more improvement in them and us as a whole," Postecoglou said.
The performance left Mariners coach Graham Arnold in no doubt as to who would be the side to beat in 2011/12.
"Whoever is more consistent than Brisbane is going to win the competition," Arnold said.
While the Victory and Sydney drew blanks in their highly-anticipated opener, there were plenty of talking points from an at-times heated clash that the Sky Blues finished with ten men after Mark Bridge was sent off for striking.
Billed as the battle of Kewell and Emerton, it was the former who certainly came out on top, the latter looking well off his best and having a first-half penalty saved by Victory keeper Ante Covic.
Emerton admitted he was disappointed with his performance, but insisted he would improve with time after a stop-start beginning to the season following his switch from Blackburn Rovers.
"I think the longer the weeks go on, I think I'll get fitter and stronger and feel more comfortable out there," he said.
Kewell's determined performance signalled exciting potential for the Victory as he was a constant attacking threat, only denied a goal on debut by some fine 'keeping by Liam Reddy.
But Victory coach Mehmet Durakovic said Kewell's best was still to come, rating him at only 70-75 per cent in terms of match fitness.
Newcastle showed little effects of the shock sacking last week of coach Branko Culina, with recruit Sung-Hwan Byun's late goal earning a 3-2 win over Melbourne Heart under caretaker coach Craig Deans.
