PEOPLE power plays its part - that's the theory behind our Citizen Player of the Month competition.

Throughout the season, we have published a coupon each week on our sports pages giving fans the chance to pick their player of the season - and giving you the chance to win Deepdale tickets, courtesy of Nationwide, official sponsors of the Football League.

And you responded in your hundreds, often agreeing overwhelming on who should be the player of the month.

It has been a remarkable year in the awards stakes, with Michael Jackson picking up several of the monthly wards before going on to receive the Citizen Player of the Season Award, which was presented to him during a training session by Citizen reporter Chris Dixon.

The midfield maestro just pipped skipper and last year's recipient Sean Gregan and striker Kurt Nogan to the popular prize, the first of string of end of season awards Michael has bagged

On receiving his award, modest Michael said: "I would like to class this as an award for the whole team," said Michael, "as there are a lot of players who deserve it and you can't achieve everything on your own.

"It's great to receive awards like this - it's the icing on the cake for the season."

Manager David Moyes congratulated Michael, adding: "Michael has been very consistent all season and thoroughly deserves his award."

On-loan star Steve Basham not only became the first loan player to win a player of the month award - he became the first player ever to win the award two months on the trot, being presented with February and March's trophies by Citizen sports reporter David Higgerson.

Basham said at the time: "I am thoroughly enjoying my time here at Deepdale and to win two awards from such wonderful fans is amazing. I can't thank them enough."

The Citizen player of the month award will start again in August as PNE start the new season and once again it will be up to you, the readers, to pick who you think is performing well for Preston.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.