All-Ireland SFC Quarter-final: Tradition is everything. No matter how great the interludes between Roscommon's big-match appearances at Croke Park, they always leave the audience thinking they've just seen something a little different.

You leave thinking you'd like to see a little more of it also, but then 10 years go past and Roscommon come out with a different bag of novelties.

Yesterday, against a stern Kerry side, they fielded Shane Curran, whose lifelong campaign to become known as El Loco was advanced a little with his attempt to make an umpire flap his arms like a bird's wings and his eagerness to abandon his goal area as if it were prone to bomb scares.

There was more of course. Three second-half goals. A full back moved to midfield. Frankie Dolan celebrating a goal which left his side six points adrift with 10 minutes left. And so on.

The large Roscommon contingent cheered until the end and saw enough to suggest their favourites would be back again in Croke Park sometime soon. Then again, every Roscommon side leaves that impression on the place.

And Kerry went away scratching their heads and frowning. There is no better county for pronouncing their glass half-empty. For now the pessimists must be given the floor.

The surfeit of articles dealing with the Kerry phenomenon of having so many forwards that the EU are considering putting half a dozen into intervention has disguised the fact that Kerry have special needs at the back.

Many observers have long denounced the incarceration of Séamus Moynihan at full back as cruel and unusual conservatism. Yesterday, not for the first time, it almost cost Kerry.

Moynihan is the best footballer in the country. He is not a natural full back, though, and only a player of his skills and commitment could have made such a handsome fist out of playing the position at this level for so long.

Yesterday, though, he looked as comfortable as a man in a hairsuit. Roscommon scored three goals in the second half and squandered four other good goal chances during the match.

That's seven clear-cut opportunities. If Roscommon could score three, Tyrone could score five.

Kerry's ailment isn't solved by mere diagnosis, however. There is no cure-all sitting on the bench. Switching Moynihan to some place where he will fit better and do more damage is one thing; finding another full back is another.

And it's not just Moynihan. The entire full-back line looked forlornly creaky yesterday.

The good news, of course, is that the forward line looks as spry as ever.

The starting six had all scored from play by half-time yesterday, and Declan O'Sullivan at full forward had given David Casey a torrid time in the Roscommon square.

That included a goal inside three minutes when a neat little Colm Cooper feed set O'Sullivan up for a cool finish. Two minutes later he popped another point and the trend was established.

Generally the Kerry forwards were faster to the ball and more convincing when they decided to run with it. They have astonishing pace and at times appeared to mesmerise the Roscommon backs as they cut through, darting like fish.

Roscommon were less instinctive, and after that bad start they had to feel their way back into the game. It took time. They were four points down after five minutes. Then they scored two before conceding a string of five more points.

They opted for a voguish, two-man full-forward line with Jonathan Dunning roaming elsewhere (eventually to the subs' bench) and Mannion and Dolan remaining as predators.

To Dolan fell the first great Roscommon chance of the day. Neat work between Connellan and Mannion put Dolan clear but, with the goal begging, he blasted over the bar.

Five minutes later Mannion burst through and stuck a thunderous shot into the pit of Declan O'Keeffe's belly. Two fine chances wasted.

Kerry kept doing what they were good at and led by seven points at the break.

Tom Carr did some radical surgery at half-time. Big, bold, moves. Full back to midfield. A midfielder (Lohan) to full forward. A full forward to centre forward. His centre forward already subbed.

That's a lot of stitching to do but Roscommon looked the better for it and outscored Kerry in the second half.

Mike Frank Russell and Gary Cox swapped points early in the half before Kerry ran up another sequence of four scores without reply.

Kerry weren't lording it at midfield but they were winning enough, and they had greater certainty when it came to using the ball.

Brosnan, making use of himself and his broad shoulders outside the forward line, pulled enough ball out of the chaos to further the impression he made when called upon against Limerick that he might be a viable midfield partner for Ó Sé.

On 47 minutes, just as the game was going all limp, things began to get a little odd. Cox fed Karl Mannion on the burst, Declan O'Keeffe's view was impeded by one of his defenders and a half-decent shot got good reward.

Kerry weren't unduly upset. They scored a couple of points in reply, and then, just seven minutes later, Dolan took a short free to Gary Cox, whose pace was one of the best things about the Roscommon attack, and he banged it home past a sloppy defence.

Faint sound of alarm bells in Kerry heads. They scored two more points, and then it happened again.

Nigel Dineen was allowed field, take a tumble, get up and still pass to Frankie Dolan, who banged it home.

By now Kerry had worked out that at a ratio of them scoring two points for every goal Roscommon scored it was going to take the underdogs a long time to draw even.

The worry was that Roscommon could conceivably have gone on scoring goals.

A minute later Cox burst 25 yards through the Kerry defence, and just as he looked to be deciding on whether to take a goal or a point he hoofed it improbably wide.

Roscommon deflated visibly after that.

Kerry won by five points in the end having been the better team by about twice that margin. And they went home with anxieties aplenty.

Put Eoin Mulligan and Peter Canavan into the Roscommon full-forward line yesterday and there would have been feathers all over the henhouse.

Time for Páidí to get the hammer and nails out. Some fixing needs doing.

KERRY: D O'Keeffe; T O'Sullivan, S Moynihan, M McCarthy (capt); T Ó Sé, E Fitzmaurice, M Ó Sé; D 0 Sé, E Brosnan; S O'Sullivan (0-2), D Ó Cinnéide (0-8, 6f, one 45), L Hassett (0-2); MF Russell (0-2), D O'Sullivan (1-2), C Cooper (0-4). Subs: J Sheehan for M Ó Sé (26 mins); J Crowley (0-1) for Russell (52 mins); A MacGearailt for S O'Sullivan (63 mins); S Scanlon for Brosnan (69 mins).

ROSCOMMON: S Curran (capt); R Cox, D Casey, J Whyte; M Beirne, F Grehan, P Noone (0-1); S O'Neill (0-1), S Lohan (0-3); G Cox (1-2), G Lohan, D Connellan; J Dunning, K Mannion (1-0), F Dolan (1-3, 2f). Subs: M Ryan for G Lohan (24 mins); G Aherne for R Cox (h-t); J Tiernan for Connellan (h-t); N Dineen for Dunning (41 mins); B Higgins for Mannion (62 mins).