"I think we are going to live through a pretty interesting season," reveals Casellato. "Every club involved in the GUINNESS PRO12 has been vigorously active in the summer due to World Cup, and the fact that they knew they would play an important part of the season without their best players.
"Everybody has looked at bringing in quality replacements in time for the beginning of the season, and not to lose too many points in the play-off race in the first couple of months.
"That's basically why every team is now much more competitive than a year ago - larger squads with better internal competition.
"Having said that, that doesn't necessarily mean that every team will play better and will improve as there are different aspects to be considered when clubs introduce new faces.
"First it's not guaranteed that a player will contribute to his new club in the same way he did at the previous one and there are also frequently troubles from the players in adapting to the rugby adopted in a different competition.
"So it will be pretty interesting to see how each set of coaching staff will implement the new signings and how they will integrate the new players into the set-up.
As said before, the Rugby World Cup will play a crucial role this season.
"Yes, a lot will depend on the Rugby World Cup group stage," explained Casellato. "If, say, Scotland, don't reach the quarter-finals their players will be able to contribute immediately to the Warriors' title defence.
"But in general, the way the clubs prepared in the pre-season will influence their season, that's a pretty simple rule, and this year that is directly connected to the national teams' preparation.
"So it will be really interesting to see how the squads will progress to the second half of the campaign."
Increasing standards in the GUINNESS PRO12 has been widely recognised by the rugby community and Casellato is one of those who believe the competition is growing at an impressive pace.
"I'm not the one that have to say the GUINNESS PRO12 is growing in competence and competition," explained Casellato.
"There have been results that has underlined its progress: Leinster, Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh's in the recent European competitions speak volumes on how the GUINNESS PRO12 has quickly become a force in Northern Hemisphere rugby."
This year will be an important one for Italian rugby as fans are asking both Benetton Treviso and Zebre Rugby, historically at the bottom of the GUINNESS PRO12 standings, to accelerate in the learning curve and start contributing to the competition's global growth.
It's something pretty complicated for a country that, though progressing well, is still at least a couple of years from getting back the first visible results of the 'Revolution' the Italian Rugby Federation began a few seasons ago with the introduction of new local Under-18 academies and Under-16 Centre of Excellences.
"Well, we can't hide it, the Rugby World Cup is creating huge problems for Italian teams as we are missing several key players of our starting lineup," admits the former international scrum-half.
"This will definitely be a difficult season for us but we must say that this situation will open the doors for a lot of young Italian players that, I know, are willing to accept the challenge.
"We at Treviso, in particular, had also some major injuries to the likes of Angelo Esposito, Luca Morisi and Alberto Sgarbi to deal with and we are pretty short in backs at the moment.
"But we will wait for the end of the Rugby World Cup to make some definitive decisions on the matter."
Benetton Treviso have started the season well anyhow. The bianco-verdi offered a very positive performance in
Cork, in a hard-fought, slender defeat against Irish powerhouse and last season's PRO12 finalists Munster, before falling just short against Challenge Cup runners-up Edinburgh in Monigo.
"If we had played a bit more consistently in the first ten minutes of the second half we may even have created more troubles for the Munstermen," admitted Casellato.
"It was clear though that they were not at the same condition we were, as they evidently planned to be fully fit later in the season, and it was also evident that a point in Cork is always something to cheer about.
"Against Edinburgh, a team that was able to inflict a total of 77 points on us in two games last season, we played even better - especially in the second half.
"At the end of that game we got a losing bonus point but I guess we all felt we left empty handed."
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