Joe Canning warns shape-shifting Limerick will only improve

Joe Canning has warned that shape-shifting Limerick are only going to get stronger after surviving a Munster SHC scare against Clare on Sunday.

John Kiely's reigning All-Ireland champions bagged three goals in seven minutes to completely change the momentum of a contest they had been second best in.

The Treaty are hunting a fifth Liam MacCarthy Cup in a row - an unprecendent achievement. Rivals will be desperate to stop them, but former Galway talisman Canning said Kiely has his side primed to improve as the summer progresses.

"Yesterday will only bring them on," he told RTÉ Sport at the launch of Bord Gáis Energy's 'That’s Hurling Energy’ campaign on Monday.

"They'd a lot of guys where it was their first day out for a good few weeks. It probably took them a while to get going but when you look back on it, a lot of it was down to Clare just making a mistake for the goal and allowing them back in, giving them a little bit of oxygen to get going again.

"At 53, 54 minutes you were probably thinking, 'jeez Clare could run away with this'.

"But in fairness they are champions for a reason. Once you give them a sniff of it, they'll go for the jugular."

Canning noted that Limerick adopted a favoured tactical tweak that helped them to turn the tide.

"They probably funnelled back a lot of players into their own half and tried to cut off Clare a little bit," he said.

"That left huge space down the other end. They do that at times, they don't do it all the way through the match but if they're under a little bit of pressure, you'll often find... like Cian Lynch came into it for instance in the last 20 minutes and got on a world of ball. But up to that he was probably more centre-forward and not as deep.

"In the last 20 minutes he was going