There will be time enough for criticism as the season unravels so let's just say the five Australian Super Rugby coaches had, at some point in their opening round matches, reason to smile.
Steve Larkham tends to be of the Wayne Bennett school of showing emotion but it's doubtful whether a meaningful frown crossed his face during the entire duration of Friday's match in Canberra. So dominant was his side, so skilfully did they play, that it was only when recognisable faces filled the screen - like Nehe Milner-Skudder, Cory Jane, Julian Savea, Beauden Barrett, TJ Perenara, Victor Vito, Ardie Savea and Blade Thomson - that it dawned that the team the Brumbies were putting to the sword, 52-10, was none other than the Hurricanes. The team that thought they were going to win Super Rugby last season until the Highlanders just managed to ruin their party â€¦ There would have been moments when the ACT boss might have wished for better - the execution of their exits might have been better managed, for example, with Jesse Mogg's left boot being hugely missed - but generally the Brumbies finally started showing the full scope of what a Steve Larkham side can do. 
The Australian Rugby Union would hope to have him learning his craft with a Super Rugby team for a few years more yet, but there can be no doubt who the next Wallabies coach will be when Michael Cheika calls it a day.
Still smiling, but perhaps not quite so brightly, would have been NSW's Daryl Gibson. In his debut match as a Super Rugby head coach, he got everything possible - in practical terms - out of the performance, a bonus-point win. When the Waratahs applied themselves - and ask yourself when have they ever looked so relaxed playing against Queensland - they looked well-drilled, efficient and ruthless.
"No-look passes" can be showy and sometimes catastrophic but when they are thrown with the regularity the Waratahs displayed on Saturday night, it's the sign of a team that is not only confident playing together but one that is also thoroughly enjoying its rugby.
I confess it's probably too late for me to join in all the Kurtley Beale revisionism but as a rugby player he is getting better and better. Reds winger Chris Feauai-Sautia probably should have tried to burn him with an in-and-away and slid into the corner but he still would have been confident of barrelling straight over the top of the Waratahs five-eighth.
Instead, Beale launched himself at him, stopped him dead in his tracks and then, for good measure, won a penalty at the breakdown. The joy with which the Waratahs swamped him with congratulatory hugs spoke volumes. This is a happy side.
Gibson, however, wasn't entirely delighted with the way his side allowed play to become so "messy". But what was really incomprehensible was that he would express mild annoyance with the way the game ended. "For me, it's disappointing the game ended the way it did - the scrums were being kept down there for four or five minutes. I'm a spectator too. I didn't come to watch that." Well, in the nicest possible and most respectful way, tough. The scrum was the only area of the game where the Queenslanders were throwing their weight around so they can hardly be blamed for milking that dominance when they had the chance.
And while Angus Gardner's refereeing of those scrums might have been open to debate, the reality was that the Waratahs were very lucky to have escaped with their bonus point intact.
It's unlikely to have escaped Larkham's attention that the Reds were applying that pressure with a seven-man scrum. "Give your opponent what he doesn't like" has always been the prime directive behind game plans, and I suspect Larkham will be intending to give Gibson's Waratahs a full dose of Brumbies scrummaging power next week in Canberra.
Winners are grinners, so Melbourne Rebels coach Tony McGahan would have been pleased when he woke yesterday and pondered his team's six-point victory over the Western Force in Perth. But once his Force counterpart Michael Foley got past the disappointment of that defeat, he too would have had cause to at least draw comfort that his team had stuck valiantly to their enterprising game plan and will be far better for it in the weeks to come.
For McGahan, losing captain and halfback Nic Stirzaker would have been a big blow in the week before the match, as was losing Jack Debreczini with a stomach bug three hours before it. But to then lose replacement five-eighth Mike Harris, who pinched his quad in warm-up but soldiered on for half an hour, would have thrown all plans into chaos.
Trouble was that the Force, too, had made their plans around Debreczini and were momentarily thrown when they encountered the impressive Reece Hodge in the playmaking role, particularly as he was on Super Rugby debut.
The Rebels are starting to play like a maturing team - more control, discipline in clearing their own territory, less helter-skelter play - and there was deliberate intent in the way they kicked more than 30 times on Saturday night.
By contrast, the Force were outkicked by a scale of three-to-two. Ironically, for all their intent to score tries, perhaps they should have kicked more. By not doing so, they were allowing the Rebels to pin them in their half and wait for mistakes.
And then there was Reds coach Richard Graham who yesterday was very much forcing a smile. He might have been pleased with his side's set-piece performance but even the success of his scrum and lineout would have done little to ease the pressure on him because it's well-known that this was assistant coach Nick Stiles' area of expertise.
True, there was spirit and willpower but, as with last season, there was no cohesive game plan evident. The speed and sophistication of Super Rugby has reached a point where enthusiastically throwing oneself at the line in the hope that it might break is just unthinkable and unreasonable.As with Jeff Miller and Phil Mooney before him - like Graham, good men both - time is running out for the Reds coach. It's just a shame that another season needed to be wasted before the rebuilding could begin.