All Blacks only ‘halfway down the road’ after Tri-Nations win
They left this in no doubt after following up their series whitewash against the British and Irish Lions by regaining the Tri-nations.
They lost their opening match in South Africa but won their last three games, including Saturday's 34-24 victory over Australia in Auckland, to finish the southern hemisphere season on a perfect note.
Henry said: "The results have been outstanding really. If we sat back in January and said we'd win the Bledisloe Cup, the Tri-nations and beat the Lions three zip, we'd be pretty happy wouldn't we? But we're still halfway down the road in the development of the team."
He said winning the Tri-nations was a greater achievement than beating the Lions because of the greater challenges posed by South Africa and Australia.
"The three best teams in the world are playing in this Tri-Nations series. Those teams will be quality teams through to the next World Cup so it's going to be a continuous challenge."
Henry was satisfied with the way his team is developing towards France in 2007 but warned they still had a lot to do if they wanted to win the World Cup for the first time since 1987.
For his part, Australia coach Eddie Jones is predicting significant changes to the Wallabies before November's European rugby tour after their worst losing streak in 36 years.
It was the Wallabies' fifth straight defeat and their worst losing run since 1968-69 when they lost seven in a row.
Jones has signalled sweeping changes to his Test team after admitting many of his players were not good enough.
"The trick for us to go forward now is finding players who are going to be better than what we've got at the moment because clearly the players we've got aren't good enough," Jones said yesterday.
Jones left for France yesterday to begin work on setting up a Montpellier base for the November tour and 2007 World Cup. He gave only guarded hints that under-siege skipper George Gregan would tour.
"George is like any other player. His selection is assessable by form but we're certainly very positive about it," Jones said.
But Gregan, 32, said he would not step down as captain, and so would be available for Australia's tour to the Northern Hemisphere.
Apart from Gregan, the entire front row of Bill Young, Brendan Cannon and Al Baxter, plus back-rowers John Roe and Rocky Elsom are under threat of being bypassed for the four-Test tour to Europe.
Jones was most galled by three consecutive penalties, two committed by replacement prop Matt Dunning, which gifted New Zealand nine points at a key time after the Wallabies stormed back from 20-0 down to 20-19.
"Extremely disappointing. Inexcusable, absolutely inexcusable," was Jones' response to Dunning's actions bringing down a chip-kicking Aaron Mauger and collapsing a NZ scrum.
"We had them under the pump. We had them clearly rattled. All we had to do was be composed. They weren't going to score a try against us on multi-phase. We shouldn't have given away silly penalties."
Jones will sit down with his fellow selectors in just over a week to name a 30-man party for the European tour.
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