Manual flight practise in a sim every 3 - 6 months is not going to sufficiently prepare for dark night, strange airfield, bad weather and abnormal procedures in the real thing. Sure, autoflight is normally the preferred option if possible, but I believe it is clear to ppruners that some on-line hand flying operation is needed to prepare for the case where there is no other choice.
Captains who are permitted to allow hand flying can give F/O more than 50% PF time, due most are busting to improve their experience. The trade off for this consideration would be their grateful acceptance of some appropriate hand flying. Lost count of my different F/Os but can sure remember that there was only one who didn't think this was a great deal.