Experienced right back Neil Austin arrived at the club in the summer of 2009 in a direct transfer from Darlington, the first between the clubs in eight years. He had an excellent first season, and was voted as the Player of the Year by the supporters. The following season was a difficult one for the Barnsley-born player when he missed around half of the games through injury, but he bounced back to play every single minute of the 2011/12 season: a rare feat for a modern outfield player, and the first for Pools since Tommy Miller ten years earlier. Along with most of the rest of the squad, Austin will have been frustrated with the way the 2012/13 season panned out, though he did enough during that relegation campaign to earn an extension to his contract in the summer. He played for two more seasons before leaving the club in the summer of 2015.