RONNIE MOORE will today find out just how much his defence has learned from its mistakes.

Hartlepool United play their final pre-season friendly, when Chesterfield visit Victoria Park. Last weekend, Pools lost 5-3 at Gateshead, the defeat coming after losing 4-0 at home to Scunthorpe.

The Tyneside defeat meant Moore fielded his first team at Dunston on Wednesday evening, when he was intending to sent a younger squad to face the Northern League club.

Pools have played 3-5-2 in pre-season, a system Moore wanted to employ last season but had to wait until he signed a suitable defender in David Mirfin before he could operate it.

Mirfin is back at Scunthorpe now and, while Scott Harrison, Harry Worley and Dan Jones have been working as a back three, Jones misses out today with a back injury.

Moore said: “Wednesday was a good game at Dunston – competitive against a determined side. We’ve not been happy with the back three and been working on clean sheets, but we managed it the other night.

“We work on it and make sure people know what they are doing. We have two exciting wing backs who want to bomb on and they can’t isolate the back three. It’s about walking through hit in training.

“For all the training in the world, you can’t beat playing games and that’s why I sent the first team to Dunston. They came through hit with flying colours.

“Saturday is a massive step up, but pre-season is about getting it right and if we get the back right, we won’t have problems going forward as we will create chances.’’

Chesterfield are likely to field Ritchie Humphreys today, and former Pools boss Chris Turner is their chief executive. The Spireites beat Burnley 3-2 last weekend.

Admission today is £10 and £5 concessions.

Pools are offering subsidised travel to the Capital One Cup first round tie at Fleetwood on Tuesday August 11.

The Club is arranging cheap coach travel to Highbury as a thank you to supporters, who can pay just £5 for their transport.

Pools are set to cover a record-breaking amount of miles to complete their away journeys during 2015/16 with over 11,000 miles ahead of them and Chairman Gary Coxall said: “As part of the initial promise to fans, one of the factors Russ (Green, chief executive), Peter (Goldberg, club director) and I looked at straight away is the cost of travel in addition to how much travelling is expected this season.

“We wanted to try and do everything we could to help fans get to and from an away game safely as well as obviously making it affordable to as many as possible.’’