Wallabies full-back Kurtley Beale enjoyed a fine game in his first run-on Test this season © Getty Images

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Wallabies coach Michael Cheika admitted to using a few "loud words" at half-time during his side's 47-10 win over the United States but said there was no angry blast for which he has built a reputation.

Australia recovered from an error-strewn first half to comfortably defeat the Eagles in their one-off Test at Chicago's Soldier Field but not before the hosts had trailed by just four points at the breakdown. The visitors' display upon the resumption was greatly improved, leaving the obvious question as to whether the Wallabies had endured a dressingroom spray during the break.

"Look there was the odd loud word said but they're usually is in the dressingroom, you know what I mean?" Cheika said. "We have a bit of fun at half-time but I don't think it was too bad," he continued with a slight chuckle."

Wallabies prop Tatafu Polota-Nau said he was a "bit surprised" Cheika managed to control himself following a half where the Wallabies had lacked detail around the breakdown and at the maul.

"No, not necessarily," the hooker said when asked whether the squad had copped a serve. "We were taken away from what we trying to achieve but then we were just rectifying that. But no, not a blast at all, I was a bit surprised."

Several Wallabies were rocked by some robust defence with Eagles centres Thretton Palamo and Seamus Kelly both coming out of the line to pull some heavy tackles. The hosts also scored a fine try, finished by Mike Petri, and showed glimpses of other attacking progress with skipper Chris Wyles and fly-half AJ MacGinty threatening.

Cheika predicted the Eagles would offer his side a "stern test" before the match and that's exactly what they delivered in a first half that would started to show shades of an under-strength Australia's disastrous loss to Samoa back in 2011.

"Normal tactical things, you know I think you're probably asking that question because you're thinking that we weren't in front by enough," Cheika said. "I don't think you can go into a game thinking, well, we should be at half-time leading by so much; what type of respect is that for the opposition?

"Yeah there were some things we wanted to do better, but not around the scoreline. The scoreline will manage itself when we perform with the correct detail and I think that, in the first half, we didn't have a lot of detail in some of the areas we needed to; like some of our maul detail wasn't good. We had a specific way we wanted to play this game; we had a few things we wanted to do. And I think that we, off the back of a big week, it got in our heads a little bit; the heat and everything; we started making a few skew-whiff decisions and then we just sorted out our decision-making and got back into the swing of it."