The Iron's youth team played their first friendly of pre-season on Tuesday night.
They were beaten 2-1 by an experienced Appleby-Frodingham mens' side, but youth development officer Tony Daws took a number of positives from the game."It went well and provided us with a good work-out," he told Scunthorpe-United.co.uk.
"There were lots of positives to take from it.
"We had a very young squad, as it was our youth team against Appleby-Frodingham's first team, and what we tried to do was give our boys a challenge both physically and mentally playing against adults.
"The average age of our squad was 16-and-a-half and it's done us really good to take on some 24, 25-year-olds.
"We had six new first years and the second years too, and it was our first opportunity to try and gel them into a collective team.
"It went pretty well overall."
United took the lead on seven minutes through second year trainee Jamie Wootton.
"It was a lovely throughball fro Zak Cowling," explained Daws.
"Jamie went in one-against-one and slotted it past the goalkeeper.
"In the first half we had lots of good possession and played really well.
"We're trying to play in the same manner as the first team do, and have been trying to do lots of rotation in the midfield and that's starting to come together.
"We're getting the full-backs high up the pitch too and enjoyed a lot of possession."
United led at half-time but started to make substitutions at half-time to give all the young players a chance to play.
The hosts equalised after 50 minutes before six U16 players came on as substitutes.
"It was a really good experience for the young lads, who had been at school earlier that day, playing against grown men," said Daws.
"They did ever so well too."
Appleby-Frodingham took the lead through a corner on the hour mark, but Scunthorpe very nearly hit back at the end through Charles Vernam, who went through and hit the post.
"We created chances but just couldn't put it away.
"Though we lost the game, there were lots of positives to take.
"The lads have taken on board the information we've given them in training and have been trying to implement it, so it's very encouraging."