Hartlepool United defender refuses to make excuses as challenging season draws to underwhelming close

Pools are coming to the end of another campaign that seemed to promise so much over the summer but has delivered more chaos and uncertainty than it has success.

The club have used three different managers for the second season in a row, with veteran Lennie Lawrence replacing the outspoken Darren Sarll in October before Anthony Limbrick, initially appointed as head coach in November, took on the top job following Lawrence's sudden resignation in February. Despite only being at the club for less than 18 months, Parkes has already played under four different managers.

Significantly, recent managerial appointments have seen Pools punt for a wide range of different characters with contrasting views on football. The decision to replace former Sunderland star and England international Kevin Phillips with the straight-talking Darren Sarll, for instance, could hardly have been a greater contrast. Phillips, who had one of the best records of any recent Pools manager but had the rug pulled from underneath him at the end of last season despite, according to his representatives, being offered a new contract after reaching 60 points, had vowed to transform his side into a more front-foot, attack-minded and footballing outfit over the summer. Instead, Sarll, who unlike Phillips did not have much of a playing career, recruited a squad with the aim of making Pools more robust, combative and difficult to break down. When Sarll's controversial stewardship came to an end in October, Lawrence and then Limbrick inherited a squad assembled by a manager with different footballing values and ideals and were asked to make the best of a challenging situation. Despite their best efforts, Pools have proved unable to make up the ground lost under Sarll and are set to languish in mid-table for a second successive season.

Looking back through the long list of managerial appointments, it's clear that Pools are no strangers to something of a scattergun approach to recruitment. In recent years, Pools have opted for experienced candidates like Dave Jones, Richard Money, Keith Curle and Lennie Lawrence, relative rookies like Anthony Limbrick and Kevin Phillips and complete novices like Graeme Lee. Pools have looked to Scotland, have tried their luck with glamorous and less fashionable names alike and have appointed managers keen to instil a footballing philosophy as well as those determined to focus on defense and organisation. At times, it has felt like there is almost no rhyme or reason to the club's appointments; Limbrick, the 16th man to take the role on a permanent basis in the last decade, is looking to buck a depressing trend, with one or two notable exceptions, of failure in the dugout.

To make matters even more complicated, Pools have been playing under a cloud ever since the unexpected resignation of chairman Raj Singh in March. While many fans have long been calling for a change in the club's ownership, particularly since the catalogue of errors that led to relegation back to the National League in 2023, the timing was less than ideal. With Singh's vow to pull his funding at the end of the season, now just a few days away, Pools were effectively plunged into a race against time to attract new investment, complete a deal and secure the club's future. The longer the wait goes on, the more precarious the situation becomes. At best, Pools run a serious risk of losing a number of their star players at the end of the season when the likes of Mani Dieseruvwe, Joe Grey and Nathan Sheron are all out of contract. At worst, Pools could be faced with the threat of administration and even potential footballing oblivion.

Parkes, who has been by some distance his side's best defender this season, is in a rather unique position having signed a contract to commit his future to the club until the end of next season. Along with goalkeeper Adam Smith, who signed a new deal at the same time, as well as new recruits Jamie Miley and Sam Folarin, Parkes is one of a handful of players known to have penned new contracts, although veteran Nicky Featherstone is another who is expected to sign on for next season. Yet while that might, on paper at least, seem like a good position to be in given the security it should provide, the fact that Pools are faced with such an uncertain future means that even Parkes cannot be sure of what next season will look like.

Whatever happens in the next few weeks or months, this season is not one Pools fans will look back on with any sort of fondness. Although supporters began the new campaign with a genuinely renewed optimism after what felt like a positive summer of recruitment, this season has failed to live up to expectations and Pools have made next to no progress; indeed, Pools finished on 60 points last season and are on 59 with a game to go this term.

Even so, there is a sense that this campaign has been something of a missed opportunity. With the likes of Wrexham, Stockport, Notts County and Chesterfield, all big clubs with considerable budgets who have dominated the division in recent seasons, all back in the Football League, there was a feeling that the National League was wide open this term. Despite the talent and experience within their ranks - the likes of Mani Dieseruvwe, Joe Grey, Nicky Featherstone, David Ferguson, Luke Waterfall and Joel Dixon have all won promotion from the National League in the past - the Pools squad have failed to live up to expectations.

For all Pools will not want to look for excuses, it's hard to imagine that the off-field chaos that has once again overshadowed large parts of the season hasn't had an impact on the squad. Even so, Parkes insists that the changes in the dugout and uncertainty surrounding the ownership haven't had a detrimental effect on results and performances.

"No, I don't think it's had an impact," he said.

"Whoever has been in the dugout as manager, I don't think that's had anything to do with it.

"Whatever is happening off the pitch, we can't handle that or even impact it. It's got nothing to do with us.

"At times, we haven't been good enough. We haven't won games when we should have, we've drawn too many games. We're not here to make excuses, that's on us. If we'd turned a few of those draws into scrappy wins, we'd be in a different position and the season would have looked a lot different.

"We wanted to be in the play-offs, that was our aim. We had a chance to do it but we just haven't been able to get into the mix."

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