As 2009 comes to an end, the Evening Post is giving Bristol City and Bristol Rovers fans the chance to vote for their player of the decade.

To help jog your memory, every week we will profile a candidate from each club.

In the coming weeks we will feature the Robins' Louis Carey, Scott Murray and Leroy Lita.

And for Rovers we will profile Nathan Ellington, Richard Walker and Rickie Lambert.

But your vote isn't just restricted to those players.

You can choose your own favourite between now and the closing date on Monday, December 28, so get your thinking hat on and get voting.

How to vote: It couldn't be simpler. Click on the poll attached to this article and on our City and Rovers pages.

You haven't featured the player I want to vote for! Then leave a message below with the name of the player we've missed and we'll add him to the poll.

This week we start with two midfielders: Bristol City's Brian Tinnion (below) and Bristol Rovers' Vitalijs Astafjevs.

BRIAN TINNION:

Sadly, too many Bristol City fans will remember Brian Tinnion's time at Ashton Gate for his ill-fated tenure as manager.

But the majority must recall Tinnion's 551 appearances in midfield, many of which took place following the turn of the century.

Tinnion learned the game alongside Paul Gascoigne in the Newcastle United youth team and his left foot lit up many a match at Ashton Gate from 1993 to 2005.

More effective in the centre of the park than on the left flank, Tinnion was regularly voted into the third tier's team of the season by his fellow professionals.

Rarely the captain, Tinnion was a leader without the armband, regularly the supplier for the likes of Scott Murray and Leroy Lita with his penetrative passing and equally adept at dead-ball situations. He also scored 42 goals.

Born in Stanley, County Durham in 1968, Tinnion was recruited by Newcastle and he went on to be a member of their FA Youth Cup winning side of 1985.

Tinnion made 30 appearances at left-back for the Magpies and earned a call-up to the England Under-21 squad for the Toulon tournament in May 1988 but had to pull out through injury.

He was sold to Bradford City for £150,000 in 1989 from where he earned a 1993 transfer to Ashton Gate for a controversially low tribunal-set fee of £180,000.

Russell Osman's move was to prove to be money well spent. Tinnion's first goal for his new club came against Rovers with a last-gasp penalty. Then, in January 1994, he scored in front of the Kop in City's famous 1-0 FA Cup win over Liverpool.

Under the management of John Ward, City had a one-season stay in Division One in 1998-99 before the arrival of Danny Wilson in 2000 saw Tinnion switched to the centre of midfield where he and Tommy Doherty formed the team's creative heartbeat. Twice Tinnion was at the forefront of qualification for the Division Two play-offs, with Cardiff City, in the semi-final in 2003, and Brighton, in the Millennium Stadium final of 2004, shutting the door.

It was following the latter game that Wilson was sacked and Tinnion was handed the chance to manage the club.

Helped by the goals of Leroy Lita, City brushed off their play-off hangover in 2004-05 but were always playing catch-up in the race for the top six. They finished seventh with Tinnion's final league game being a 1-0 home defeat to Walsall in February 2005. The following campaign began disastrously and the last straw proved to be a 7-1 defeat at Swansea that prompted Tinnion's exit and Gary Johnson's arrival.

All in all it was far from a fitting end for a man who is only bettered by John Atyeo, Trevor Tainton and Louis Carey on City's all-time list of leading appearance makers.

Tinnion's focus is now on youth development as he quietly runs soccer schools in Bristol and southern Spain.