ATCO17, you clearly wrote that the wildy tracked from WW and in no way implied that it was from WW.
The whole point of the qualifying cross country is to demonstrate a pilot's competence to plan and fly from specified point A to specified point B by visual DR navigation. Although the GPS would be a superb guard against infringing CAS and the like, it would also, pound to a pile of poo, become the means of navigation. Proof of competence immediately becoming square root of sod all.
For what it's worth, I too have past memories of flying a not heading, assuming what I could see was what I should see and, really unforgivable, not checking my DI for gyro drift ("Donnington Approach, Golf ***, confirm runway in use is 27"? "Golf ***, Approach; runway in use is 27 and the only one we've got!). All good lessons and well learned from; and fortunately no infringements.