AD
I realise that in law they are separate. However that doesn't mean that the actual reasons for the rules are separate, it means that the rules have been set up to be flexible. I also agree to conform to the traffic pattern once you join the circuit, but 4½ miles is an awfully long way out. Some of those aircraft should have been requested to hold clear until the circuit was clear enough to fit them in, their own airmanship should have led them to do so as well. The pilot that far out should have been rebriefed.
Any circuit using a powered final approach puts you outside gliding range of the runway at some point. Good airmanship dictates you know how to deal with this so no-one is seriously injured in event of engine failure, rather than that you can always glide to the runway.
A 6°+ approach path (required to make the runway from the start of the final leg, let alone the base turn point) is awfully steep, and impossible to adjust if the approach looks long without sideslip!