Ireland v Scotland. Saturday 7th October. Stade DeFrance

Your examples of McCloskey being selected on the bench do not stack up at all as you've completely ignored the context

You're shifting the goalposts here. Let me remind you of your claim:

The majority of the evidence we've seen for the last 2 years is that if there is an injury to any of the first choice 11-15 or 23 then JOB would at worst end up on the bench.

The examples of McCloskey are directly at odds with that, where McCloskey was clearly selected ahead of JOB.

Were you surprised to hear that McCloskey was selected in the 23 jersey?

If you had said 11,14 and 15, I think that would've been accurate. But including centre and 23 is a different conversation.

If anything you're overlooking that the utility back conversation is important because if there is an injury to the starting 11,14,15 then who is next up is vital for the next game

Not at all overlooking it. But it begs the question of the injury profile of the 11,14 and 15 vs the centres. Off the top of my head, I can recall games since the NZ tour where each of Ringrose (NZ), Henshaw (Fiji) and McCloskey (South Africa) went off injured in-game.

By contrast our 11,14 and 15 have been (touch wood) pretty bulletproof. In the same time frame, Keenan vs England is the only time I can remember one of the starting back-3 going off injured. (And bear in mind, that's in 3 positions vs 2).

I think that's a large part of the reason why Farrell opts for a centre in the 23 jersey.

And that's without mentioning injuries between games; again I'd wager the starting centres have a missed a higher number of minutes than the back-3. We've rarely had all 3 of Henshaw, Aki and Ringrose fit and available.

The other thing is, we've regularly had a centre on the bench, but I can't really recall a game where a centre (presumably Ringrose) has had to move to the wing?

Lucky that’s not my position, then.

There’s an obvious difference between picking a 3rd choice scrum-half for a World Cup tournament squad, and picking the 23 jersey for the last pool game where you effectively need a win. The selection policy in those scenarios isn’t the same.

But I can see why you want to move away from the original argument considering you’ve went from (emphasis mine):

to then adding caveats for why McCloskey was favoured that include:

See the problem there?

In any case, for a second time 2nite, I’m not making the argument you seem to think I’m making. When it comes to JOB, I posted the following only yesterday:

Are Conan, JOB and McCloskey the only ones without gametime yet? I think there’s a chance we might see one of the latter 2 in the 23 jersey.

In which case, maybe Earls is ahead of him then. ;) Have a good one, chief.