TC - a little harsh, and as or more misleading than PG! Clearly, in the hover or low speed, aft cyclic would be wrong. I don't think PG was trying to say it was needed, he was in his own mind just covering the case of being in the cruise etc.
As for the cruise case, perhaps it depends on the type. In the case of the Super Puma family with which I am familiar, lowering the collective lowers the nose slightly. If you floor the collective without moving the cyclic, everything flies up to the roof as the g falls below zero. Zero or negative g means no significant autorotational effect and the Nr plummets whilst IAS increases. After a while and once the rate of descent has built up the g bites and the Nr rockets up from too low to above max in about 1 second. It is a most horrendous way to enter autorotation for both its effect on the aerodynamics and the disorientation that negative g brings to the pilot.
You say lead with the collective to contain Nr, but dumping the collective does not arrest the Nr decay, you need aft cyclic as well (from cruise speed) to do that. Yes dumping the collective will eventually restore the Nr but it will have decayed much further, especially if the entry is unexpected, possibly beyond the point of no return, if aft cyclic is not applied.
By contrast a simultaneous aft cyclic movement makes it all a benign and gentle manoeuvre. From cruise speed, little or no airspeed is lost on entry, you are still well above best range speed even into a headwind so your point about airspeed and best range is plain wrong. If you enter autorotation from around Vy, less or no aft cyclic is needed of course, but then most people spend most of their time in the cruise, not flying around Vy.