Limerick boss John Kiely says lessons from last year's Munster Championship informed much of his selection policy for this year’s campaign.
The All-Ireland champions meet Tipperary in the final on Sunday in the Gaelic Grounds, a repeat of the last round-robin clash two weeks ago, a game the Premier County won by 1-22 to 0-21.
The Treaty were practically guaranteed to progress prior to that match in Thurles thanks to a healthy points difference from their two wins over Waterford and Clare.
While Clare needed Limerick to get something from the Semple clash to be in with a shout of furthering their summer, the permutations meant that Kiely could afford to alter his team - including starting hurler of the year Cian Lynch on the bench - with eyes on a bigger prize.
"We certainly did do some rotating of the players," he told RTÉ GAA Correspondent Brian Carthy.
"We learned that from last year’s championship. Having been through the round-robin series last year we came out the back end of it with a very poor performance in round four against Clare on the third day on the bounce.
"I went home that night thinking I’d have been better off if I’d changed the entire team almost as opposed to making no changes.
"It’s very difficult to play three Championship matches in 14 days at the level of intensity that they had to play at.
"We made some changes this year in game three, and to be fair we lost by 11 points last year and we only lost by four the last day.
"We got it almost right this time around. If I was to have my time back again I’d probably make a couple more changes."
The Liam MacCarthy holders are bidding for their first Munster crown since 2013 and the Garbally man pointed out two areas where his side will need to improve if they are to top Tipp.
"We were out-worked all over the pitch, that’s the bottom line and we are going to have to address that first and foremost," he said.
"We are going to have to be a bit more accurate in our execution of what we are trying to do with the ball."
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Follow the Munster and Leinster hurling finals via our live blogs on RTÉ.ie/sport and the News Now app, listen to live national commentary on RTÉ Radio 1 and Raidió Na Gaeltachta. Watch live and exclusive TV coverage of Limerick v Tipperary and Kilkenny v Wexford on RTÉ2 and the RTÉ Player this Sunday
