Craig: Would be nice seeing one of your textures mate, so get crakin'!
Funkdelic: Thanks for those kind words mate.. It's not often I get to hear comments like that really, heh
Sugarskull: That's a good job you've done there, but I got some crits though
Personally, I would've added a bit more contrast to the paint of the wooden pole. And also added a weak "outer glow" 1px, black, on normal blending to give it a bit of depth.
Also, it's usually quite important to sharpen up your textures when they're this small, as righy now it looks a tad blurry.
Other than that, I don't think there's much you could've improved upon while only using a diffuse. A specular and normal would as you said really add t this piece.. Imo, normals are the most important, and so I always go for them first. Specular could be easily done within a minute or two
There's one last thing I noticed now however, and thats the metal cap sitting ontop of the pole, you might want to define the material a bit better. One can tell it's metal, but it's not that easy and might aswell be black painted wood or plastic. So, if it's metal, add some small scratches to the edges and a bit of "metallic wear".
Cheers!