There was no conviction or confidence the way there would have been had he stayed with rugby in 2012.
He looked like he was feeling his way all over again - as he had done in his first All Black stint.
The game still doesn't appear to be in his blood and his decision-making is contrived - learned by poring over hours of footage - rather than innate. When Williams, equipped with shoulders broad enough to hold up the planet, opted to twice stop dead in his tracks and aimlessly kick the ball in Sydney, it was presumably because a thick fug had engulfed his brain. A fug born of learning the plays by rote rather than trusting his instincts.
After Sydney, the All Black coaches had much the same concerns. But they were never going to give up on him.
An exquisitely constructed athlete with a near obsessive dedication to improve, Williams is a little like Midas in that every coach he encounters ends up seeing gold.
It's understandable. In 2012 when Williams had finally settled in rugby, he was sensationally good. When he keeps it simple, doesn't overdo the offloading or trickery, he's a genuine weapon.
The All Blacks want that player back for the World Cup and Steve Hansen is confident he'll get him. Confident, because they think they have found the nub of the problem that has been holding Williams back.
"He's been a bit apprehensive because he has a knee injury that is going to be there for the rest of his life," says Hansen. "He's had it since he was 21 and he's getting older obviously.
"In the week of the Sydney test I think it bothered him a lot, so we have sat down and put a really good structure around that to try to help him ease that apprehension. I think he's feeling better about it himself and you know confidence is a wonderful thing for an athlete and if you have plenty of it you can do whatever you like."
Could it really be that simple? One fireside chat and they were inside his head, all his troubles soothed away?
Hansen thinks so, and he's seen it happen many times before. Anxiety is like a weed, it doesn't take much for it to grow and when it does it smothers everything. Nor, though, is it particularly difficult for it to be pulled out.
Daniel Carter had a nasty bout of it in Sydney, too. Like Williams, his hard drive collected too much spam and junk to function properly.
Assistant coach Ian Foster administered a simple cleaning programme that basically consisted of him telling Carter to relax, play his natural game and stop micro analysing. It worked. It really worked and, for the first time in way too long, Carter played without a care in the world.
That's the default state in which the selectors also want Williams to be throughout the World Cup. Being obsessive is great, but not when it's fretting over tiny detail and being almost paranoid about making a mistake.
It's not great when it leaves him fixating about his knee and hopelessly out of sorts. That mindset has been crippling for Williams and with no more tests left before the World Cup, has left many wondering what role he is likely to play at the tournament. Or even if there is a role for him?
The answer is that yes, he is going to go and that he's going to be given game time. How much and in what capacity is guesswork, but Hansen is sure that Williams is on the verge of re-establishing himself as a world class rugby player.
"I am confident that he will go like that - get better and better - onwards and upwards since we had the sort-out. In his own mind I think he can see light at the end of the tunnel.
"We won't play him before the World Cup. We will look to manage his workload and there are going to opportunities for him to play at the World Cup. There is plenty of time for that."
