There are a/c still flying that do not have the bells & whistles of a Map & magenta line. They are needles & dials a/c. They had a circling procedure based on stop watches & headings. It worked just fine. All the bells & whistles don't need to change everything. It is a brave new world out there for the newbies, but some of the old fart things are still valid and don't need fixing. They ain't broke.
There are airfields where the terrain is inhospitable. In dodgy weather I would like a procedure that I know will keep me safe as I concentrate on keeping the airfield environment in sight with concentration towards the final approach path & rwy.
There are also described tracks for some circling. These have been designed to enhance safety in difficult times. If you are prepared to fly those numbers, why not design your own (SOP's) to allow for all occasions.
What I did have question with was an SOP that insisted you fly a full circle at circling height even if you broke out of cloud well above circling. i.e. you had to land on the reciprocal rwy, but had broken out of cloud well above the much lower circling height. It seemed to me daft not to allow the pilot to determine that there was no intervening cloud to make the visual circuit a problem and thus level at a higher agl to give more space to position the a/c. The reason given was that the circle had been briefed and change in the approach had to be briefed, especially a visual one. My thinking was why put the a/c closer to the ground than necessary when not on finals; and why not allow yourself a longer finals to position the a/c into the slot earlier on finals. The SOP's did not include a cloud break procedure/brief. Thus if you knew it was BKN or OVC at >1500', but had to use a let down on the instrument rwy to then fly a circle, you could not brief such a manoeuvre. The thinking being that you could not guarantee the Wx conditions until visual at break out. What if there was some low lying cloud. My thinking was that a pilot should be able to brief a circle for minima and then revert to the same procedure but at a higher height. This idea was frowned upon and not allowed.