Henry felt the English, after a strong start, had deliberately sought to annul the All Blacks' advantage in the set piece by pulling back at scrum time in the 37-20 win in the first of two tests.
His comments will no doubt be chewed over by both the large pack of touring media and an England side always willing to bite back.
"I thought Greg Somerville had a very good game and dominated the contest.
I thought the All Black scrum was better than the English scrum," was Henry's neat summation of the set phase.
"It's just a pity it started to fall over at the end.
That destroyed the game as a spectacle to some extent.
It would be good to see both sides trying to scrum."
Pressed for more details, Henry came up with an adjective that is guaranteed to be repeated before the second test in Christchurch this weekend.
"There was some passive scrummaging going on, which doesn't help the game.
With a big pack like that, you've got to be positive."
All Black forwards coach Steve Hansen supported Henry's claim of scrum-time skulduggery.
"You need both teams to stay on their feet to be able to scrum.
There were a lot of collapsed scrums and both teams have to be willing to scrum for the whole game," Hansen said.
"We felt we were dominant and we certainly wanted to scrum."
The men at the coalface were not so ready to fire shots.
Both tighthead props, England's Matt Stevens and New Zealand's Greg Somerville, felt the battle up front did not ease until the final whistle.
Stevens: "I thought we scrummed pretty well, to be honest.
We managed to get one against the head and we always kept the scrum up."
Somerville: "Both teams started to fold in and when you see the other guy do that, you tend to do it as well.
Things got a bit messy.
A couple went down and England walked on us, which wasn't that nice.
I don't think it was them trying to stop scrummaging."
Apart from Henry's scrum barb, the one-sided nature of the All Black win meant the aftermath of the first test was relatively subdued.
Henry's one reservation about lauding the performance of his rejigged side was the way it tailed off in the final quarter.
"We're pleased with the way the guys played.
They overcame a huge physical performance from the English in the first 15min or so.
"Our guys showed a lot of mental toughness and scored some great tries.
I'm just disappointed we didn't go on.
The last 20min wasn't as good as we'd hoped."
The All Blacks emerged from the test with no new injuries and should welcome back halfback Brendon Leonard for his first test of the year at AMI Stadium on Saturday night.
Henry made only one change going into the Auckland test but it would not be a surprise if there were several this weekend.
Keven Mealamu will probably replace Andrew Hore at hooker, Rudi Wulf may get a debut on the wing, and Otago's Adam Thomson may start at blindside flanker with Rodney So'oialo moving back to No 8.
Alternatively, Henry's thinking may be that the All Blacks have a weekend off after this test before playing the Springboks in Wellington, so he can afford to keep the same team.
