During my latest OPC the first officer, on his first recurrent check, was given a lower grade than anticipated. He was told that his handling skills were above average but this was unimportant, procedural knowledge was all that really mattered!
Well I remember a time when I had great handling skills, it was in an airplane that didn't have an auto pilot or flight director, so theoretically doing a few legs with automatics off would help considerably, but with RVSM, and GPS STARs and SIDs it may not be in the best interest of safety.
