Former Limerick hurler Niall Moran acknowledged that the All-Ireland champions' relative lack of strength in depth - compared to other dominant sides of the past - is a concern ahead of their three-in-a-row tilt.
John Kiely's side lost their third successive league game on Sunday, by the most emphatic margin yet as Cork, victims of a decisive defeat in last year's All-Ireland final, dispatched them by nine points in the TUS Gaelic Grounds.
The Limerick manager picked an experimental starting XV, with seven changes to the side which lost at home to Galway a fortnight ago.
With the hosts taking water at the break, trailing by 14, some of the more experienced heads were sent for, Diarmaid Byrnes, Aaron Gillane and Will O'Donoghue all arriving for the restart and triggering a mini revival in the second 35.
However, in Moran's estimation, the match highlighted Limerick's heavy reliance on their core starting group and the lack of depth underneath.
"I hurled with Limerick for a long time and my group were on the back of those kind of beatings quite often so I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and start slating fellas," Moran told Game On on RTÉ2fm.
"The fearful thing for Limerick is the gap between the 15-16 players who have carried Limerick to All-Ireland success over the last three or four years and the gap to the guys thereafter, there seems to a bit of a chasm.
"The longevity of the teams who have stayed at the top for seven, eight, nine years - the Kilkenny hurlers, the Dublin footballers - every year or second year, there's a couple of new guys who've come into the equation.
"The fear for Limerick is the guys who have started in last year's All-Ireland, I don't think any of them are under pressure for their place. That's not meant as a slight on the guys who came in. Guys like Robbie Hanley, Colin Coughlan, Cathal O'Neill, they all did well in patches.
"But I suppose the expectation when you're playing for the All-Ireland champions is that you're at the ultimate best. And that doesn't allow lads to settle in. So, that was probably the most discouraging thing."
And, while Moran accepts that Kiely may have felt the need to call on his a-listers at half-time, given the half-time score, the 2013 Munster champion wondered whether it might have been more beneficial in the long run to leave the novice starters (Hanley, O'Connell, Coughlin) on for the duration.
"Part of me thinks that maybe you should leave them the younger players) there, leave them sweat it out, they would have had the wind in the second half. I would have probably just left them there.
"Because ultimately, you probably set them back a good bit by taking them off.
"Whereas, at least if they saw it out, a couple of them might have improved their performance. Even Cathal O'Neill is after getting a goal. I know the substitutions are probably pre-ordained.
"It is a worry. Teams are catching up. I don't know what Limerick are doing. They looked a little bit leggy. That is a concern. Everyone would feel that teams are catching up, in this year's league in particular."
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Listen to the RTÉ GAA Podcast at Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
