Oz
You could equally say that if you fail to exercise sound judgement your ability to hand fly counts for precisely f*#k all, as you so delicately put it.
It is comforting to know that I can hand fly if I have to but it's also comforting to know that all I have to do is trim the rudder and put the AP on and my capacity to monitor, manage and support my colleague and my crew has increased, those are all desirable things in an emergency.
You use the resources at hand to maximise the chances of a successfull outcome. Fair enough to consider and practise what to do if some of those resources are unavailable but that is a very different thing to deliberately ignoring them in the real case which would be rather foolish.
I also,suspect in the real case ( and in the sim if not previously agreed by your trainer) that a company would take a dim view of a decision not to use the AP if it was available to you.