MARTIN Scott is today nursing a feeling of what might have been. While Bristol City and Brighton scrap it out tomorrow in the play-off final for a place in Division One, the Hartlepool United assistant boss knows his team should have been contemplating life in a new division.

Instead, they are on their summer holidays as Pool were dumped out of the play-offs in agonising fashion, after conceding two late goals at Ashton Gate last week.

But Scott admits that if it wasn't for Pool's home form, they would have been pushing QPR and Plymouth for an automatic promotion place.

Pool drew eight games at Victoria Park and former Sunderland favourite Scott, who guided Pool's reserve side to the league title, admitted: "We deserved our place in the top six when you look at our performances over the season.

"Had we not drawn so many home games we would have been looking at a top-three position.

"What people saw from us in the play-offs was typical of the way we have performed all season - it is what myself and the gaffer demand; the high work-rate and commitment and the closing down of opponents when they have the ball.

"It is the way we feel we need to play in this division.

"But we also demand that the players play football as well; it's about knowing the right times and places to do it.

"Sometimes you have to lump it forward but we don't have big strikers and we don't see that as the way forward."

Pool were written off by everyone at the start of the season, but never dropped below the halfway mark in Division Two as Scott's relationship with boss Neale Cooper blossomed.

The pair were strangers before Cooper's appointment last June and Scott said: "To have gone up from Division Three and stayed up, which Hartlepool hadn't been used to down the years, was an achievement in itself.

"But Neale has taken the club on to a totally different level and there's a massive spirit on and off the field.

"I know all about the passion in the North-East anyhow from my time at Sunderland and while Hartlepool is on a smaller scale, there's still the same intensity of feeling from people about their club, as we all saw in the play-offs.

"The atmosphere at Victoria Park was absolutely tremendous and when the officials and players came out at the start, the noise they generated was unbelievable.''

Pool striker Eifion Williams is recovering from the hamstring injury which forced him to miss out on an international debut in midweek.

He was called in the Wales squad for the double header with Norway and Canada, but was injured in the closing stages of the play-off defeat.

He said: "I can walk without pain now, but haven't started jogging yet.''

Pool, linked with a move for Barnsley's former Sunderland midfielder Chris Lumsdon, are back for pre-season training on July 1 and will return to Holland and the KNVB training camp for a third successive year.

They go to Holland on Monday, July 12 for five days and will face Top Oss - who they beat 6-0 last year - on July 14 and FC Eindhoven on July 16.

Pool then visit Billingham Town (July 20), before Cooper returns to Scotland for games with Ross County (July 23) and Inverness Caledonian Thistle (July 25) and Berwick (July 27).

Their final warm-up game is at Whitby on August 3.

* Aberdeen yesterday appointed Dunfermline boss Jimmy Calderwood as the club's new manager. Cooper was on the shortlist for consideration if The Dons were unable to get their first choice .

Read more about Hartlepool here.