1920 Signed by Spurs - Wins the FA Cup in 1921

   'In 1912 Bert Bliss and Arthur Grimsdell arrived. In 1913 Cantrell and Fanny Walden were signed on. In 1914 Banks, McDonald and Clay came. But as yet there were no fireworks: the spark that was to be struck on the arrival of Jimmy Seed and Jimmy Dimmock had to wait the duration of the war.' 

[From Spurs - A History of Tottenham Hotspur FC -Julian Holland]

From The Jimmy Seed Story (1957)

Winning My Spurs—and a Cup Medal

   My journey from Wales to London to sign for Tottenham Hotspur was naturally far happier than that dismal trek from Sunderland to Tonypandy. Six months ago as I stared out of the rain-soaked window of the train I was looking back on what might have been. Now I was looking ahead. I was still young and ambitious. In a few hours' time I would be signing for one of the greatest football clubs in the land. The sun was shining as I gazed from the carriage window. It was a wonderful life, and I didn't intend to weaken.

[Left: JS front row, 3rd from the left.]

   Peter McWilliam met me at Paddington, and while we drove across London to Tottenham, this wise Scot gave me sound advice which I readily accepted.
"Play the game with Tottenham," he said, "and you'll never regret it. You are joining a club of standing who are noted for their strict impartiality and general sense of justice for all their players. Stand by us and we'll stand by you."

   For eight years I served Tottenham without so much as a grumble, and I am the first to admit that the turning point of my career came when I joined Spurs and began to mingle with the cream of football talent. My chance to make good came quickly. After only five games with the reserves I was promoted to the first team to partner one of the most remarkable right wingers of all time, the famous ' Fanny' Walden. Imagine my excitement, to say nothing of a little trepidation. A few months earlier I was playing for a little known club in the Rhondda Valley, and now I was to partner the biggest little guy in soccer on Tottenham's right wing. This was towards the end of the 1919-20 season, and as the efficient Spurs team was already galloping away with the Second Division I found myself sitting pretty in a side that was to gain promotion to Division I in the first competitive season since the 1914-18 war put paid to League football.

   Yet it was in 1920-1 in my first full season at White Hart Lane that I was to have the biggest thrill, when Spurs collected the Blue Riband of Soccer - the F.A. Cup - after defeating Wolverhampton Wanderers in the final at Stamford Bridge 1-0. Only one thing marred the occasion. Fanny Walden damaged a cartilage soon after the first-round tie against Bristol and was unfit for the rest of the season, thus his burning ambition to own a Cup-winner's medal was never realized.

   Even as a youngster I was something of an idealist and, therefore, thought it essential to study my partner's style. But it took me some time to get used to Fanny Walden in my early games with him. Peter McWilliam once summed him up by saying: 'His feet are quicker than his brain.' This was not meant as criticism of Fanny's intelligence, but it gives some idea of how quickly those twinkling feet moved. 

   Brilliant as he was, he would not have fitted into all teams. Frequently, he completely fooled me as well as the opposition, but as we got to know each other better I was able to keep my place with him. However, I had a great admiration for Jimmy Banks who took Fanny's place after the cartilage operation. I was able to fit in better with Jimmy's direct methods. This is in no way intended to take credit from the skill of one of the finest entertainers the game has known. The war had cut completely across Fanny's career at a time when he would have enjoyed his peak. He had been picked to play for England against Scotland in April 1914. He didn't play for his country again until long after the war when he was chosen against Wales in 1922.

   Fanny Walden had been discovered by Herbert Chapman when Herbert was manager of Northampton. At this time Walden was playing inside-right for Wellingbro' Redwell, but when Northampton folk saw the size of the little fellow they told Herbert, 'He'll get killed in League football!' But Fanny knew how to take care of himself, and Chapman helped matters by converting the little inside-right to a winger. He was so small he was almost able to run between the legs of big full-backs, but it was the giants who found his smallness a handicap when trying to tackle and found he wasn't there. Chapman didn't keep him at Northampton. He sold Fanny to Tottenham in 1913 for £1,700—a big fee at that time.

   But back to our Cup run. It was in the second-round tie against Bradford City at Tottenham that my lucky break came and I really attracted the attention of the Press, my directors and the Spurs supporters for the first time. It was the game that sealed my football career.

   We were drawn at home. The match was played on a boiling hot day, and perhaps this excuse is as good as any for our poor display up to half-time. I couldn't get going and the whole Spurs forward line - Banks, myself, Cantrell, Bliss and Dimmock - were struggling. With the score 0-0 at half-time there were anxious faces as we strolled into the dressing-room.

JS at the piano (dark jacket)

   No man was more concerned than Peter McWilliam. He spoke quickly to Arthur Grimsdell, our captain: 'They are evidently wise to our style. We must change our tactics.' Then turning to me, the Tottenham manager said with a little reproach: 'You, Jimmy, must go through on your own in this half.'

   I went out again feeling a heavy burden had been placed on my shoulders. I knew I had not done well so far, but I was now very conscious of the fact that McWilliam had given me a quiet ticking off. Within a minute of the kick-off I was in possession of the ball. Normally, I would have passed, but with our manager's instructions still fresh in my mind I decided to dart for goal. The Bradford defence obviously expected me to pass, but on I went until I had only Jock Ewart, the City's Scottish international goalkeeper, to beat - and this I did by cracking the ball well out of his reach. The roar of the crowd was tremendous, but this was only the beginning. In another thirty seconds I had the ball at my feet in the penalty area, and managing to squeeze between both backs I again beat Ewart. Two goals in less than two minutes! I had now really won my spurs. Banks, who had taken the injured Walden's place on our right wing, scored goal No. 3, and later I cracked in my third goal from some twenty-five yards out. I look back on this match as one of my best-ever games - not only because I claimed three goals, but with the ball running for us in this second half, I was able to distribute it, hardly making a mistake.

JS left

   The newspapers were kind to me next day. Reporters of thirty-five years ago didn't write up footballers as personalities as do the modern soccer writers. The old-timers were more restrained and not terribly interested in a player's background off the field. The old-time reporter stuck to the facts of the match, as you will see from an extract from a clipping of this game:

   'Seed, the Tottenham inside-right, achieved a great personal triumph at White Hart Lane on Saturday. He was an out-standing figure in the forward line, and he had a big share in enabling the Spurs to qualify for the next round of the Cup. The City were defeated by four goals to nil and Seed obtained three of the four. He did much more than that. He was the life and soul of the attack. In the second half he brought about the demoralization of the Bradford defence by scoring a couple of goals within two minutes of the resumption of play after the interval.'

   I was, of course, on top of the world, but Tottenham did not allow me to develop a swollen head. After all, it was only a job of work well done. Peter McWilliam rubbed this point in on the Sunday morning when we discussed the previous day's Cup success. Said the Spurs manager to me: ' That third goal of yours, Jimmy, was a terrible shot. Why shoot from twenty-five yards out ? You had time to walk up to the goalkeeper and push it past him - just like you did with the first goal!'

JS on a Spurs Away Day

   Knowing McWilliam, I realized he was half ribbing me, but I said nothing. Certainly, I could have told him a story about that all-important first goal. It was touch-and-go whether I scored. I was going a wee bit too fast for myself when I was clear of the opposition. In another second I would have lost control of the ball. It was really a desperate effort that helped me to propel the ball with my shin instead of my boot past Jock Ewart. No doubt from the grandstand it looked a clever effort, but had McWilliam realized how very near I came to missing this goal, he probably wouldn't have given me the advice about walking the ball up to the goalkeeper. Football is such an odd game that had I missed that first goal we might not have won the Cup that year.

   In the third round we visited Southend United, and although the Third Division club put up a gallant struggle we finished up 4-1 winners. I recall that they might have led 2-1 but for missing a penalty shortly before the interval when Fairclough shot wide after the referee had argued with him about the ball not being correctly on the spot. I scored our last goal, but by this time Southend were a well-beaten team.

   Luck was with us in the fourth round when we were drawn at home to Aston Villa, the Cup-holders, who at this time were about the most glamorous team in the country; especially as it was the fourth round the previous season at Tottenham that Villa had knocked Spurs out of the Cup, the match in which Tommy Clay, then the Tottenham captain, had, to the consternation of the large crowd and himself, scored the only goal of the match against Spurs. Tottenham had been the better side, but Villa went on to win the Cup. Poor Tommy never forgot that game, and still referred to it even until shortly before his death in 1951. Misfortunes such as this can happen to the best players in the world, and it was a tribute to the faith the England selectors had in Tommy that two days after this tragic kick he was given his first cap.

   You can imagine how keen was Tommy Clay to avenge the previous season's Cup defeat; 51,991 fans paid £6,922 and queues began early in the morning. Although Spurs had more than 75,000 fans at White Hart Lane for a Cup-tie against Sunderland in 1938, it is interesting to note that only £5,857 was paid at the gate in 1938. The 1921 attendance figures not only shattered the existing Spurs receipts record, but were the highest of any inter-club match in Britain up to that date. 

[There was disquiet, though, at the high ticket prices that were charged.]

   What an exciting game it was! Both teams included some of soccer's giants . . . Frank Barson, Sam Hardy and Billy Walker were in the Villa side, and Tommy Clay, Arthur Grimsdell and Jimmy Dimmock for Spurs. This time Tottenham gained revenge when Banks cracked in the only goal after twenty-three minutes. I figured in this winner which was really a fluke. Jimmy Dimmock centred right across the goal. I confess I often had an attack of nerves during a big game. The ball was bouncing awkwardly and 1 was rooted to the spot. I had frozen up. Then suddenly I felt a terrific crash in my back. For a moment I did not know what had happened, but when a deafening roar came from the crowd I looked up to see the ball in the back of the net and a disappointed expression on Sam Hardy's face.

   What had happened? Jimmy Banks had sized up the situation and had spotted something was wrong with me. So he hit me and the ball at great speed as best he could. That winning goal was actually scored off Jimmy's knee! Some reporters credited me with the goal. It was quite understandable in the general confusion. I was grateful to Banks for summing up a delicate situation so quickly. His intervention confused Sam Hardy. Without action by our winger, everybody at Tottenham would have been referring to the open goal that Jimmy Seed missed. 

   That freak goal put us into the semi-final against Preston North End on Sheffield Wednesday's ground at Hillsborough, and in spite of two disallowed goals and the refusal of two likely penalties we beat Preston 2-1 and reached the Final against Wolves at Stamford Bridge. I don't want to harp on some amazing decisions by the referee in the semi-final, but I can't forget an incident when Banks crashed the ball into Preston's goal in the first half. I had been fouled outside the Preston penalty box just before Banks hit the ball out of goalkeeper Causer's reach. The referee disallowed that goal, and gave Spurs a free-kick for the foul on me!

   However, we were through to the Final. I recall waking on the morning of April 23rd 1921 delighted to see that it was raining heavily. I liked heavy ground, perhaps because of all my experience on the mud at Mid-Rhondda. Peter Me William was delighted also. The heavy rainfall would help the ball to run accurately, and this would suit the Tottenham style because we had some above-average ball-players in the 1920/21 side.

   But as the day progressed, steady rain developed into a rainstorm and the Spurs manager had the smile wiped off his face as the pitch at Stamford Bridge began to resemble a pond, and when the water subsided the pitch was so muddy that any hopes of a classic Final were given up, and the football was ordinary, although it was one of the most gruelling games in which I had taken part. 

Dimmock Scores!

   We had some luck that day, and perhaps none better than when Jimmy Dimmock hit home the only goal eight minutes after half-time. Jimmy did not have a very good game, finding the muddy pitch an encumbrance to his touch-line dribbles. He was determined to hang on to the ball. After beating Gregory, the Wolves right-half, Dimmock should have slipped the ball inside to either Bliss, Cantrell or myself, who were all on the spot as Woodward, the right-back, came to tackle. Instead, he tried to kick the ball between Woodward's legs - a trick that seldom comes off. The back checked the ball, but later slipped. This was Dimmock's chance. He retrieved the ball, went through and with a left-footed drive from about fifteen yards out beat George, the Wolves goalkeeper. Without luck, Dimmock would not have been given a second chance after losing the ball, but all we cared about was that this goal had won the Cup for Tottenham for the second time in twenty years. 

   Jimmy Dimmock was not yet twenty-one and he was, of course, the hero of the game. The London boy was cheered at the end. It was our half-back line who served us so well in this Final. Arthur Grimsdell worked like two men, and was well backed up by Charlie Walters and Bert Smith. Tommy Clay was tremendous at right-back.

   We drove back to Tottenham in an open charabanc, and all the way excited Londoners cheered us. It was the first time the Cup had come to the Big City since Tottenham had last won it in 1901. Billy Minter, the trainer, held it high in triumph. Why not our captain? Well, typical of Arthur Grimsdell [left], having played a blinder, he slipped off quietly to his Watford home without seeking any praise or pomp or ceremony. The further we drove the bigger became the crowds to cheer us and before we approached our club headquarters there was complete traffic chaos. The old trams were jammed, and mounted police had to come out to clear the way for the triumphant Spurs.

Leaving Stamford Bridge with The FA Cup

   Of course, we sipped champagne from the Cup while thousands of delighted Tottenham supporters crowded outside the ground calling in vain for Arthur Grimsdell and Dimmock. Dimmock had already slipped out of a side door.

   Peter McWilliam had reason to feel proud. Since the end of the war he had built up a team which had won promotion from the Second Division in one season and won the Cup the next. We had also done well in the First Division. Besides winning the Cup we had finished sixth, and the following season we still carried nearly all before us, reaching the semi-final of the Cup and being second in the League. This was the highest position Spurs ever held in the First Division before or after until in 1951 they at last became League Champions. 

   We looked like reaching our second Final in successive years when we led Preston 1-0 at half-time in the 1921-2 semi-final at Hillsborough. I had scored the goal direct from a long throw-in by Arthur Grimsdell - this was one of our favourite moves - but we were shaken after half-time when the Preston team took on a new lease of life. They fairly bubbled and beat us 2-1. And no wonder. I learned from Archie Rawlings, who had scored both North End goals, that every player had been given champagne at half-time.

Jimmy's FA Cup Winners Medal

   The most disappointed of all our team was Fanny Walden. 

‘Well, boys/ he said, as he took off his boots in the dressing-room, ‘there goes my last chance of a Cup medal. I'll never kick another ball.’

   Fanny was almost as good as his word. He left Spurs shortly after to join Northampton and soon faded out of the active side of the game.

   Was the side that McWilliam built up over two years Spurs' greatest ever team? Old-timers will say yes, although many will say that Arthur Rowe's team after the Second World War that gained promotion from the Second Division in 1949-50 and won the League Championship the following season was the better side.

I would not like to answer this poser because it is all a matter of opinion as it is a physical impossibility for the two teams ever to have met. For our team I would say we were nearly all ball-players and, generally speaking, we played football because we loved the game.

   Of the more recent successful Tottenham side I will concede that they played a much faster game. Whether they would have run us off our feet by sheer speed I cannot say, but allowing for the belief that you can't stop progress I am prepared to admit that, as skilful as were the Spurs of 1921, they might have been given a shock if faced with the Tottenham side of 1951.

Chapter 13. Tottenham Save £1- and are Relegated

   SPURS TRIED TO save £1 a week on my salary for the 1927-8 season, and this Scrooge-like effort cost them their place in the First Division. Don't think I have a false idea of my value, but let me place a few facts before you. During the 1926-7 season I went out of the side for a couple of months with an injured ankle. This let in a bright young Welshman named Eugene 'Taffy' O'Callaghan, who made such a good impression that, as is so often the case in football, the injured player was unable to get his place back when fit again. O'Callaghan, a Welsh schoolboy international, was a fine ball-player. I was naturally disappointed, but had no grouse against the Tottenham decision. All through my soccer career as player and manager it has been my belief that club must come before player. I accepted being dropped from the first team philosophically. I did, however, feel I was not being treated fairly when I learned I was to be offered £7 a week wages the following season compared with the then maximum of £8.

   Following those three glorious seasons when Spurs were on top of the soccer world, the team began to break up in 1922-3 and by 1926-7 it was not possible to recognize the successful side of a few years earlier. I had continued to have quite a bit of success as a goal-scorer, but by 1925-6 I was playing a new role in the deep midfield and, naturally, was not scoring so many goals as previously. In 1926 we lost Arthur Grimsdell who broke his leg at Leicester, and then in February 1927 Spurs had an even bigger blow. Peter McWilliam was offered £1,500 a year to manage Middlesbrough who were riding high at the top of the Second Division. Peter didn't want to leave Tottenham, but when the Spurs directors refused to compromise by raising his salary to £1,000 a year, he decided to go North.

   Had Peter McWilliam remained, I am sure that my own £1 a week crisis would never have occurred, but at this time the Tottenham directors were cutting down expenses and had introduced a policy which ruled out buying stars.

Billy Minter, an old Spurs inside-forward who had trained us when we won the Cup, took over as manager and George Hardy was brought from Arsenal as trainer. When I realized Minter did not intend to keep me on my £8 salary, I asked to be released. It was the first difference I had had with Tottenham in eight years and did not constitute any bitter quarrel. There certainly wasn't a temperamental outburst by me. The facts are that I had turned thirty. I realized O'Callaghan, more than ten years my junior, was coming to stay, and I was not content to end my career in the reserves.

   Oddly enough, when Spurs dropped me around Christmas, I was selected the same week for the Rest against England in the international trial. I travelled as Spurs' twelfth man to Liverpool and, after watching O'Callaghan give a skilled demonstration against Everton, I decided I had little future at Tottenham. I wanted to get out as a player before I boarded the soccer toboggan.

   I caught a chill at Liverpool, and when we arrived back at Euston it was to find London shrouded in an old-fashioned pea-soup fog. I found a taxi, but it took hours to get home, and when eventually I fell into bed it was with a high temperature and a bad dose of flu. I had to cry off from the England trial the following Wednesday.

   While recuperating in bed I had plenty of time to consider my future, and I decided that my best move would be to quit as a footballer and try my luck as a manager at the first opportunity. I still had these thoughts in my mind when the McWilliam upheaval came. His departure made me more than ever determined to get away, as I knew Tottenham would never be the same for me again without the man who had been my friend as well as manager.

   So when Arthur Fairclough resigned as manager of Leeds United I applied for the job, but Dick Ray was appointed. Then I noticed Aldershot were looking for a manager. After an interview with the directors, I was offered the post, providing Spurs would release me.

   I was most disappointed when Billy Minter withheld permission for me to join Aldershot as manager. He said Spurs had a better proposition for me. I didn't know at the time that Sheffield Wednesday had been making inquiries about me for fourteen months and that Minter, while willing to let me go, was negotiating for an exchange with Darky Lowdell, the wing-half who had played in Welsh football with me. It was all just a question of how much Spurs were willing to pay Sheffield Wednesday for Lowdell - plus me.

   Minter persuaded me it would be better to go to Sheffield as a player than to Aldershot as a manager, and after recommending my brother Angus to the Hampshire club, I agreed to become a Sheffield player. As I have already told you earlier, the deal was completed by telephone in Minter's office. There wasn't any bargaining, and I didn't see a Sheffield official until some weeks later I was met by Bob Brown, the Wednesday manager, at Sheffield station.

   Once more I was making a train journey, with time to ponder about my future. This time I was neither depressed, as travelling from Sunderland to Tonypandy, nor exhilarated, as in the case of my jaunt from Wales to London to sign for Spurs. I was now mature and had the satisfaction of knowing that I had done something worthwhile with my playing career. Yet I did wonder how much longer I would be able to hold my place in First Division soccer.

[-JS]

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Spurs - Julian Holland (1957)

   THE Tottenham side of 1921 centred-as did the r95I side around four players. They were Tommy Clay at right-back, Arthur Grimsdell at left-half, Jimmy Seed at inside-right, and Jimmy Dimmock at outside-left. The strength of the team differed from the 1951 side - with Ramsey, Nicholson, Burgess and Baily at its core-in that its power lay directly in the attack rather than in the prompting of the attack. Stop at random any game in which the two sides were playing and you might find the hub of the 1921 side a total of twenty to thirty yards further upfield than 

that of the 1951 side. 

   Again as in 1951 there were two 'thinkers' - Clay and Seed coupled with two 'naturals' - Grimsdell and Dimmock. In I951 it was Ramsey and Nicholson with Burgess and Baily. Indeed, the parallel continues further: cerebration both in 1921 and 1951 lay on the right flank; intuition on the left. 

   Fair-haired Tommy Clay was Spurs' right-back for many, many years. He joined the club in rọ13 from Leicester Fosse, captained the promotion team, and was a stalwart of the Cup- 

winning side when not far from his thirtieth birthday. Clay was never very fast, but his positional play was perfect. Cecil Poynton told me that when he first watched Tommy Clay he used to think he was lucky: the ball seemed to come to him more than he went to the ball. And then he realized it was not luck, it was football - football of the highest order. Tommy Clay was also a great kicker of a ball, particularly on the volley. He was another Tait, just as his partner, McDonald, was very much another Harry Erentz. 

   Tommy Clay was capped for England in 1920, two days after he put Spurs out of the Cup with a tragic miskick into his own goal. Spurs were having a good Cup run at the same time as they were walking away with the Second Division championship. Although they had a ten-point lead in the League, there were those who suggested they might fall between two stools as they moved into the last eight in the Cup. They met Aston Villa and although they looked the better side they lost by the only goal. Villa went on to win the Cup. The goal for Villa was scored by poor Tommy Clay and he talked of it until his death thirty years later. He was clearing a loose ball without much danger when by some odd trick of Fate it turned into his own net. 

  Tommy Clay was a constructive back in the pattern of Warney Cresswell. He lacked Alf Ramsey's meticulous insistence on playing a ball to a colleague whatever the conditions - who for that matter has ever had it? - but he tried whenever he could to direct his clearances - long ground-skimming passes - to his forwards. 

   Arthur Grimsdell was as inspired as Tommy Clay was controlled. Frank Osborne, Fulham's manager who played for Spurs in the twenties, says of him, "He is the only member of the 1921 side who would have got a place in the 1951 team. And then only just!  An attacker who never doubted his ability to recover, Arthur Grimsdell was always moving up with his forwards on innumerable goal-sorties. He possessed all the control and skill that the other wing-half, Bert Smith, lacked, but he used them with much of Smith's effectiveness. His judgment was unparalleled; he took over the captaincy from Tommy Clay in 1920 and held it till his retirement almost a decade later. 

   Even when the years slowed him down, he remained the same dominant power in midfield that he had always been. He was aggressive, determined, possessed of a mighty shot: all in all, a complete footballer. 

   Tall and handsome, he set Spurs' fashion of tucking his shirt inside his pants. He directed Spurs' left-wing like a muddied Svengali, making up with his acute generalship for all Bert Bliss' lack of scheming. He had at his disposal Dimmock's brilliant ball-play and Bliss's thrust, and, allying them to his own magnificent powers, he created one of the great things of football. The Grimsdell-Bliss-Dimmock triangle will be talked about as long as there are old men in Edmonton. Their play together inspired and directed by Grimsdell was a wonder to behold. From this trio came hundreds of brilliantly conceived goals, goals that were positively created, not suddenly presented by a defender's error. Year after year Grimsdell would bring the ball over to his wing, and push it with the inside of his right foot down to Dimmock on the line with all the accuracy and firmness of a Puskas. Then Dimmock would take it past a bewitched back to within goal-range and roll it carefully into the open space at the corner of the 

Penalty area for Bliss or Grimsdell to run on to and crack into the goal. 

There were times when the move took on an air of inevitability: it must have seemed so to many a defender. Some measure of the attacking quality of Grimsdell's football can be gleaned from the fact that in the first season after the war, he scored fourteen goals. 

   Jimmy Seed is too young to have seen such as Ernest Needham or Crabtree as a boy. But with experience stretching over forty years - the greater part of the history of soccer - he declares Arthur Grimsdell to be the greatest wing-half ever to play football. It is a great tribute from a great footballer. More particularly - and more to the point - it is a great tribute from a great inside forward. For your inside-forward is your best judge of your wing-half: he depends on him so. 

   It was Jimmy Seed, a young black-haired boy from Durham, and in his teens the idol of a Welsh mining village, who generalled the forward-line, feeding it, probing it, working like a young beaver to keep it moving and well-supplied, and who still found time to watch for his captain's sudden upfield sallies and move in behind him to cover the left flank's defence. 

   Seed - the talk of South Wales while he was still a boy - was brought at the end of the 1919-20 season from Mid-Rhondda in time to fit into the side for their Cup-winning year. So strongly did the local supporters of the Rhondda club feel about losing their idol, that, when they heard of Peter McWilliam's interest in him, they threatened to lynch Spurs' manager if they found him anywhere near the ground. But McWilliam had heard great reports of the boy and he was determined to see him play. So he sat in the stand through an entire match behind a heavy disguise of spectacles and false beard to appraise the young inside-forward. 

He was more than satisfied, and Seed was immediately signed. 

   Seed commanded a football rather than played with it. He was equipped in large measure with the skills of the game. He could shoot hard and accurately he got a hat-trick in the second round Cup-tie in 1921 against Bradford City. He was a fine header of a ball. Jimmy Dimmock recalled to me that when he took a corner kick, Seed would stand on the far corner of the goal area, signalling with his arms in the air, He knew that if he could kick the ball accurately enough to Seed's head, there would be no mistake about it going in the net. He was a clever dribbler of a ball, but most of all he liked to play football quietly and with polish over on the right flank with Fanny Walden: the two of them inter-passing closely, neatly and deftly, taken up for the moment with delight in their own skill, and almost unwilling to return to the proper business of the game unless it could be done by some devastating pass inside for Cantrell or Bliss to throw his boot at it. 

   Yet Jimmy Seed's interludes with Walden were the only licence he permitted himself. Otherwise he moved resolutely towards the conception of the team game that by the 'thirties had completely ousted the Corinthian-like individual brilliance of so much of the play of the 'twenties. 

   Seed was a football brain. He understood the abilities and the potentialities of his colleagues perhaps as well as did Arthur Grimsdell, and he understood Arthur Grimsdell perhaps better 

than the left-half understood himself. It is no wonder that Seed today is one of the great football managers, a man of knowledge and perception, a skilled tactician and teacher of the game, a man to find the best in players and bring it out of them. It will always remain a pity that Seed left Spurs when he did. Only he could have saved the club from relegation in 1928, but by then he was away saving his new club, Sheffield Wednesday, instead. 

   

   [Perhaps the most brilliant player in the Tottenham side of the early post-war years was Jimmy Dimmock, the young Edmonton boy who scored the winning goal in the Cup Final of 1g21 before his twenty-first birthday. Certainly after Fanny Walden dropped out of the side, he was the trickiest ball-player left. 

   Spurs have always been well-served at outside-left: Bobby Buckle, Jack Kirwan, Jimmy Dimmock, Willie Evans, Les Medley, George Robb are but half a dozen. Dimmock had much 

of Kirwan's ability to beat a back as he pleased. Like Kirwan, too, he was not confined to a single trick that might be rumbled and answered. He had the skill to take the ball to the corner-flag and then dribble up the bye-line - who in English football but Matthews and Finney can do it to-day? - before flicking it back for Bert Bliss to run on to and blast into the net. 

   Jimmy Dimmock was unlucky in that he was at his peak at the same time as such as Ruffell, Seymour, Quantrill, Tunstall and Page: otherwise he might have had a drawerful of caps. As it was, he was capped (along with Bert Bliss, Arthur Grimsdell and Bert Smith) against Scotland in 1921 and Wales and Belgium in 1925-6. 

   These four great footballers - Clay, Grimsdell, Seed and Dimmock - were, then, the kernel of the Cup-winning side. They were not all the side, by any means. There was a deal of brilliance in many of the other positions, and everywhere there was competence. After all, there were seven 'caps' in the side - Bert Smith. the right-half, Fanny Walden, the outside-right, and Bert Bliss, the inside-left, as well as the Big Four.

   When Fanny Walden was injured in a match against Arsenal at Highbury in January before the second round of the cup, Spurs had a great problem to find a replacement. They solved it by trying out Banks - once the regular inside-right until the arrival of Jimmy Seed - who turned out a considerable success, He was a strong and direct player and though he had little or none of Walden's skill with the ball, he provided an admirable foil to the trickery of Dimmock on the opposite wing. Well prompted by Seed, he kept attacks moving at pace and took his chances in front of goal with considerable confidence'.

...................................

   'These then were [some of] the players that brought the greatest honours in football to North London. These were the players, hand-picked by Peter McWilliam, who won promotion to the First Division in one year, followed it the next by winning the F.A. Cup and were Championship runners-up in the following year. In the opinion of most who saw them they were Spurs' greatest side, though the brilliance of the 1951 team caused a number of re-appraisals. Jimmy Dimmock himself, his china-blue eyes taking on an air of intense seriousness, will tell you why, in his opinion, the '21 side was the better: 

   'We were all footballers. We went on the field and we played our game and won the Cup. We didn't have any tactical schemes or strategies. We just played the game as it came to us, and man for man we were the better footballers.' 

   Jimmy Seed wasn't so sure; 'Of the more recent Tottenham side I will concede that they played a much faster game. whether they would have run us off our feet by sheer speed I cannot say, but allowing for the fact that you can't stop progress I am prepared to admit that, as skilful as were the Spurs side of 1921, they might have been given a shock if faced with the Tottenham side of 1951.'

                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                                    **SHORTS**

   Spurs pitch was in poor condition in 20/21 - Jimmy was told off by Peter McWilliam for limping across the pitch to the tunnel after pulling a muscle during training. He was told that should have walked round rather than damaging the pitch. They trained outside the playing surface at this time. training being fitness based rather than skills based at that time.

                        

                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First ever charity shield match held between the League and FA Cup Winners:

1920/21 F.A. Charity Shield  

Monday 16th May 1921

Venue: White Hart Lane, Tottenham Hotspur FC

Tottenham Hotspur  2 (Bliss, Cantrell),   Burnley  0

Attendance: 18,000

The Charity Shield match was between the 1920/21 Football League champions, Burnley, and the FA Cup winners of 1920/21, Tottenham Hotspur. The match was played at the end of the season in which they won their honours.

Tottenham Hotspur: A Hunter, T Clay, R McDonald, B Smith, C Walters, A Grimsdell, J Banks, J Seed, J Cantrell, H Bliss, J Dimmock.   

Burnley: J Dawson, L Smelt, W Taylor, A Basnett, T Boyle, W Watson, W Nesbitt, R Kelly, J Anderson, B Cross, E Mosscrop.   

Link - Details of all Charity Shield/Community Shield matches.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   'The team that won the Cup in 1921 had in Tommy Clay, Bert Smith, Arthur Grimsdell, Jimmy Seed and Jimmy Dimmock five players to rank with any in the club's history.' 

   'It was Jimmy Seed, a young black haired boy from Durham, and in his teens [actually early twenties] the idol of a Welsh mining village, who generalled the forward-line, feeding it, probing it, working like a young beaver to keep it moving and well-supplied, and who still found time to watch for his captain's sudden upfield sallies and move in behind him to cover the left flank's defence'.

[From Spurs - A History of Tottenham Hotspur FC by Julian Holland]

1921 FA Cup takings being carried away to the bank for safe keeping.

JS Stats 1920/21:

                               Apps Goals
1920-21  FA Cup        6      5 
1920-21  Div One     37    12 

04: 1919 Post WW1 - Sunderland to Mid Rhondda FC

From The Jimmy Seed Story:

But football had ceased to be the important thing in life for me. Britain and Germany were at war, and playing football was no longer such a thrill. Tommy Thompson, Tom Wilson and myself joined the Cyclists Corps at Sunderland. Later we were drafted to France, with Tom Wilson going to the 5th Battalion West Yorks while I went to the 8th Battalion. We still kept in close touch. In fact, we were frequent rivals on the soccer field because Tommy Wilson was the captain of his battalion and I skippered mine. They were worrying and uncertain days, and football helped me to escape from periods of mental depression. In the last month of the war I was among a crowd of Tommies to get gassed. I was sent home to Sheffield Hospital. I made a good recovery, but was ordered a few months' convalescence at a health resort.

[In the event, the convalescence was actually much shorter than that.]

The war was now over, and Sunderland were playing in the Victory League. I had already called at Roker Park before going on convalescence, and then by coincidence I met the team en route for a match against Durham City. They were a man short and manager Bob Kyle asked me to help them out - at centre-forward !

I should have refused. I was not fit and I was not a centre-forward, as I had learned to my cost in the first trial Sunderland had given me, but I was so anxious to pick up the loose threads and try and get back at Sunderland that I foolishly agreed. You can be too obliging and too anxious. I played badly. I didn't expect to get a game immediately afterwards, but I was hurt when I learned that my poor display meant I was never to play for Sunderland again. The directors had decided that my war experience had finished me as a footballer, and I was not offered terms. I walked away from Roker Park completely dejected. How different to the morning in August 1914 when I had hung around outside the ground, nervous yet full of hopeful ambitions. Now I felt bitter for the first time in my life. I was twenty-three, suspect in health and, worst of all, unwanted at Sunderland.

My old friend Tommy Wilson suffered a similar fate as myself. When he returned from the Army, Sunderland gave him a free transfer but he was quickly signed by Huddersfield Town. I wasn't so lucky. For some unknown reason Sunderland, although not wanting me, hadn't placed me on the free transfer list. Rumour travels quickly, and when one or two managers who may have seen me with Sunderland reserves showed interest, they were completely discouraged by exaggerated stories of how my health had suffered as the result of German gas. I became more and more despondent as I reflected how cruel fate had been to me. It seemed all my boyhood ambitions had been shattered and I was finished before I had really started.'

Jimmy later described how he'd done 'a bit of labouring and played football with the kids among the slag heaps' to get himself fit. But he'd also be turning out for Whitburn Cricket Club, as this photo reveals:

Jimmy is back row, third from the left 

However, according to an article in the Pictorial Weekly magazine of March 1931 'During the following summer Jimmy worked in the shipyards, and I could see that the life was distasteful to him. But he persevered until a foreman and he had words about a charge for overtime, and the young footballer "chucked" his job.  

Then came a ray of hope. [In July 1919] Haydn Price, manager of the Mid-Rhondda club, wrote and asked if I would be prepared to play for the Welsh club.
[It was later revealed that the manager of the Mid-Rhondda Football Club had asked Sunderland for the names of any surplus players, and that the Sunderland directors had recommended Seed]


It wasn't what I wanted because it meant that at twenty-three I was stepping out of the Football League, and I realized that the step back into top-grade soccer was a far more difficult move. But what could I do? Wasn't it better to have a go in Welsh football? At least I would be able to judge whether or not I was sufficiently fit to play the game again. Also, I had heard about the terrific soccer boom that had started up after the war in Wales and that several well-known League players were doing well down there. So I wrote to Haydn Price saying I would be glad to join Mid-Rhondda.
Thus, I packed up my troubles in my old kit-bag and decided to try my soccer luck once again, this time in a lower grade.

    It was a long, tedious and miserable train journey from Sunderland to South Wales. It rained all day, and my own future seemed dismal as hour after hour I stared from the carriage window. It was still pouring when I arrived, but immediately my mood changed, for the warmth of my greeting from the Welsh officials and fans overcame the bad weather and my own mood. Never before or since have I been made to feel so welcome. In fact, the greeting given me was out of all proportion. After all, I had never even appeared in League football yet and there wasn't any transfer fee involved, but I was cheered as though the heavyweight cham­pion of the world had just stepped off the train. Haydn Price and Harry Moody, the Mid-Rhondda goalkeeper, were the first to shake my hand, and I felt immediately I was among friends. More than anything I owe to those warm-hearted Mid-Rhondda officials, players and fans the fact that my confidence was restored. If I had not had the opportunity of going to Wales, I might never again have made a comeback into big-time soccer. I shall remain forever grateful to them.

    When a man gets backing he begins to feel good. My health improved and I soon struck up a happy understanding with Frank Pattison, the right-winger, who had also played for Sunderland. I was greatly encouraged, too, by Joe Bache, the old England international who was captain of Mid-Rhondda. Joe's wisdom was like that of an elder statesman. His best playing days were behind him but his generalship and captaincy made him the hero of the fans, and I learned more about the art and responsi­bility of a skipper from Joe than from anybody I know. It served me well later when I was to become captain of Sheffield Wednes­day.

In this friendly atmosphere I quickly found my feet again, and Mid-Rhondda began to enjoy success. During my seven months with them, the Welsh club won the championships of the old Southern League (Second Division) and the Welsh League plus the South Wales Cup. It seemed non-stop football to me, and in that half-year I must have played well over sixty League, Cup and friendly matches, and although they were played on some of the worst grounds I have ever come across they were all great fun.

    [From Wikipedia: A highlight of the season was when Mid Rhondda played local rivals Ton Pentre in a preliminary round of the FA Cup. 20,000 spectators watched the game, filling the ground with many more covering the mountainside overlooking the pitch. More success was to come when the team won the Southern League Division Two, amassing 37 points over 20 games, losing none and drawing only three games. They then took the Welsh League title, beating Cardiff City into second place, losing just five of the thirty games. They completed the season with a third trophy, beating Barry F.C. 1–0 at Merthyr to take the South Wales Cup.

The strength of the club at the time is best gauged by the challenge matches the team undertook against Football League clubs. Due to the large following the club possessed, they were able to offer incentives to league clubs to travel to Tonypandy. These were teams that normally played Bristol on the Saturday, then brought their first teams to the Rhondda for a Monday night encounter. Crowds in excess of 15,000 and the substantial win bonus that was offered elevated these games above friendlies. These encounters included wins over Nottingham Forest (3–1), Derby County (2–0) and Portsmouth (1–0) in 1919, a draw against Tottenham Hotspur and a narrow loss to Aston Villa (1–2) in 1920.]

[The JS Story:]

    The grounds at Porth and Ton Pentre were very small. The river ran alongside the Porth ground and a man was specially appointed to retrieve the ball whenever it was kicked into the water, which was frequently. And the mud! It was up to your eyes in mud. I smile today when I read of managers discussing heavy grounds. Believe me, you don't know the meaning of the word unless you have played football in the valleys of South Wales. Hardly ever did I play on a dry pitch, but the conditions suited me splendidly because my training at Sunderland plus my Army life and the football in France had helped me to develop physically. I don't know what would have become of me had I gone to Mid-Rhondda in 1914 when I was a slip of a lad. Probably the name of Jimmy Seed would never have been heard in football again.

    Before my playing days were to end I took part in some thrilling matches for England and Cup Finals and League Championship games for Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield Wednesday, but none of these was more exciting than an F.A. Cup preliminary round match between Mid-Rhondda and Ton Pentre. At the time we were carrying all before us. Ton Pentre is situated some three miles up the Rhondda Valley from Tonypandy where our team had its headquarters. The rivalry was terrific and there was little else discussed in the miners' pubs and clubs a week before the match.

    While Ton Pentre were almost invincible on their own small ground, we were favourites on our home pitch. It seemed that every miner in South Wales was present on the Saturday. Some­how or other, 28,000 soccer-crazy Welshmen squeezed into the ground, and the mountainside overlooking the field was black with spectators who couldn't get inside. It must have been one of the largest crowds ever gathered for a sporting event in the Welsh valleys and, believe me, there was more excitement from this crowd than from any huge gathering I have since witnessed at Wembley, Hampden Park, Ninian Park or Windsor Park. With­in a minute we were one up when a centre from Frank Pattison on the right wing was turned into the Ton Pentre goal by Patsy Gallagher, the 'Ton' centre-half and skipper. Our supporters just went crazy. They invaded the pitch singing, shouting, waving hats, and rattles. Others hugged and embraced the home team. The referee could not re-start the game because many excited fans who had come on the pitch decided they had a better view around the touch-lines, and it was five minutes before the game started once more, with thousands of spectators now around the edge of the playing pitch.

    We didn't hold the lead for long and 'Darky* Lowdell, the visiting inside-right equalized, and Darky silenced our supporters with the winning goal in the second half.

    Lowdell was attracting much attention from the scouts of first Division clubs and it was rumoured that Peter McWilliam of Tottenham Hotspur was one of the interested parties and had made several trips to South Wales to see for himself. I envied Darky because, happy as I was with Mid-Rhondda, it surely was natural that I pined for top-class football. It was while reading rumours of McWilliam's interest in Lowdell that I decided to write to Sunderland to ask that I might be given a free transfer because, although I had permission to play for Mid-Rhondda, my old club still had my name on their books. I was almost surprised when my request was granted by return post. I felt this matter to be important because at least I might get to a Third Division League club now that there wasn't any transfer fee hanging over my head and I was free to go anywhere I liked.

    Then the surprise came. Towards the end of one season with Mid-Rhondda, Peter McWilliam asked me: 'How would you like to join the Spurs ?' It was like a dream. Discarded by Sun­derland before the start of one season, and now wanted by the famous Tottenham Hotspur club at the end of the next. It hardly made sense. Sunderland must have been dumbfounded. When they heard about Spurs' interest in me they were displeased, and efforts were made to get me to return to Roker Park. It might have been difficult for me to have joined the London club but for the fact that I had taken the precaution to get permission for a free transfer in writing. After McWilliam saw this document he pointed out politely but quite firmly that I was free to join any League club I liked as Sunderland no longer held any claim on me. It was a lesson that I never forgot, and when I became a manager I never came to any quick decision about a player being finished after he had gone through a bad patch. 

    So many 'failures' have recovered from a bad start to make the grade. Take Sam Bartram, who, after being given a trial as a half-back with Reading, was passed over. By the time I watched him at Boldon, Sam had turned goalkeeper, and a good one. Reading's mistake was my gain just as Spurs were helped by Sunderland's hasty decision.

    But it wasn't Sunderland who really held up my transfer to Tottenham. The big objection came from the Mid-Rhondda supporters. The Welsh club hadn't enjoyed such a successful season for years and when it became known that Spurs had made attempts to sign me, the Mid-Rhondda fans figured this might mean the breaking-up of their successful little team with whole­sale departures to League clubs. They were particularly angry with Peter McWilliam, but they were also displeased with the management of Mid-Rhondda. They had it in their heads that I was not a willing party to the transfer, but had been more or less forced to join the London club in order to assist Mid-Rhondda financially. They didn't mean to let me go without a fight.

    I made my last appearance for the little Welsh club in a mid­week match against Llanelly. The game passed without incident, but the crowd gathered at the back of the stand at the finish and began to let the management know what they thought about them because they had agreed to sell Jimmy Seed. It wasn't any secret around Tonypandy that a band of loyal and angry supporters had planned to grab McWilliam as soon as he showed his face, and duck him in the soggiest patch of that muddy field. They waited, believing the Spurs manager to be in the dressing-room when the game ended, but Peter had been tipped off as to what was in store for him, and the gentleman was not available for ducking.

    The crowd would not go home, and began to chant and jeer. A member of Mid-Rhondda appealed to me to go and speak to them and to explain that I was going to Tottenham entirely of my own free will and there wasn't any question of my being handcuffed and sold into bondage. So I went out and faced the crowd. There was an immediate hush, and there wasn't any antagonism when I explained that the move to a big club was for the good of my own career, and that while it was helping me the money would also help Mid-Rhondda F.C. They quietened down and, although not entirely satisfied, allowed everybody to leave in peace. But the football fans of Mid-Rhondda never forgave Peter McWilliam. When in later years we discussed my signing he told me he had disguised himself when looking at players along the Rhondda Valley. Certainly, it is a fact that when he returned to the area after signing me to take another look at Darky Lowdell, he put on spectacles and a false moustache to avoid any mud-slinging !

    Strangely, McWilliam first spotted me when making the jour­ney to Wales to watch Lowdell. Years after when I was to join Sheffield Wednesday, Spurs exchanged me for Lowdell who had been snatched from Wales by the Yorkshire club. Spurs got their man in the end!
    Luck plays a tremendous part in man's success, and you can apply that to any walk in life. After I had become a manager I met Peter McWilliam, and while recalling the day he signed me from Mid-Rhondda at the expense of Sunderland, I wisecracked: 'Are you still lucky?'
    'Lucky?' he asked with a smile. 'You were the lucky one, Jimmy. I showed judgment. If I hadn't spotted you, you would have spent the rest of your career in third-class football in Wales!'  Peter McWilliam was probably right.

    My journey from Wales to London to sign for Tottenham Hotspur was naturally far happier than that dismal trek from Sunderland to Tonypandy. Six months ago as I stared out of the rain-soaked window of the train I was looking back on what might have been. Now I was looking ahead. I was still young and ambitious. In a few hours' time I would be signing for one of the greatest football clubs in the land. The sun was shining as I gazed from the carriage window. It was a wonderful life, and I didn't intend to weaken.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Given surface job at colliery, but manager Price changed his mind...

[Soccer From The Inside - Jimmy Seed 1947]

    When I was rejected by Sunderland after my return from the 1914-18 war, with my physical constitutions impaired from the effects of poison gas, I was fortunate enough to secure a playing engagement with the Mid-Rhondda club. It was also agreed that I should undertake an above ground job at a nearby South Wales colliery to augment my soccer remuneration.

    Before I could commence work at the pit, however, Haydn Price, the Mid-Rhondda manager, called me into his office and told me that I was to forget about the colliery post. He had decided that I was to concentrate on playing football. In other words, he wanted me to be a full-time professional.

    I offered no protest on that score, for I had seen quite enough of the pits, but there was still my financial position to be considered. My mind was soon set at rest on that point, however, and Haydn Price treated me very fairly. Thus I became once more a full-time footballer.

    I admit that there are exceptions to every rule, but I’m certain that in my own case, the Mid-Rhondda manager acted wisely, when he made it possible for me to concentrate on football to the exclusion of all else. Since that day, I’ve not been in favour of a player having another job, unless it is absolutely essential. Not that I am adverse to a young football having a trade or a career ready for that day when his playing career comes to an end, but it must not interfere with his progress as a professional footballer. 

    A player who finds it impossible to attend the ground for training, except on two evenings a week cannot really get to know his teammates, and them to know him, in that intimate way that fosters the family spirit, which is so essential to team success. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From a newspaper clipping in Jimmy's scrapbook:

"I had been convalescing in Wigan, of all places," he recalled. "When I got home I asked for a game. They agreed to let me play in a Victory Cup match, but I had a shocker.
Major Prior, one of the directors, and the club doctor called me in to see them later, and the major raid: "No man who has been through two gassings is good for top-class football.
"Forget the game, sonny. Have a rest, and then start back in the pits. That way you will stay fairly healthy and not strain your body."

Seed's mind went back to the days before the war when, just in his 'teens, he had gone down into the Durham coalfield from his Whitburn home and worked for a few shillings a week.

Better than the pits

"For a brief while before going into the Army I had sampled the life of a professional footballer," he told me. "I liked it much better than the pits. Those words of the Sunderland directors seemed almost savage at the time."

For a while Seed pottered about in Whitburn, where he was raised doing a bit of labouring and playing with the kids among the slag heaps to get himself fit.
Most weeks he would call on the Sunderland club. Then he was told that the Welsh club Mid-Rhondda were willing to give him a trial.
"I ran all the way home. The packing didn't take long. It never does when you've only got one suit. Next day I arrived in South Wales and I began playing straight away."

The pay was not lavish. But it was supplemented in a small way by an Army pension granted after those gassings at Nieuport, in Belgium, and Valenciennes.

"The extra came in handy," Jimmy smiled. "Then, one day, they called me for a medical.' First they asked me what I did for a living, and I told them. They said that anyone who played football must be fit, and my pension was stopped."

Seed the Fighter became a Mid-Rhondda favourite. Then in 1920 Peter McWilliam, of Tottenham Hotspur, offered him a full-time footballing job at White Hart Lane.

Within a year he had helped scheme Spurs to a Cup Final win over Wolverhampton Wanderers. His great pal, Jimmy Dimmock, scored the winning goal, and the boy from the Durham pits celebrated with champagne.

It took a man of courage and character to pull himself up out of the gloom of these post-war days when his health was bad, and the future looked black.

And it needed great modesty to hide from everyone except his wife the fact that those gassings still took their toll through the years, when the English winter was at its worst and the damp and the rain brought the pains to his chest and the aches to his head.

"I have never been really well. When I had to take time away from the club, I always said I had a cold."

Jimmy Seed never felt it wise to let the players he led to so many great triumphs know that those days in Flanders and France still occasionally took their toll.

For, as he puts it, "You've got to be fit in football. And if you are not, keep telling yourself you are. It’s surprising how well it works.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jimmy Seed signed this Spurs publicity photo and added a dedication to Haydn Price, his former manager.

Wiki:

    Seed's football career was rescued by Haydn Price (former Wales international), the manager of Welsh non-League team Mid Rhondda who were based in the town of Tonypandy. Price offered Seed a chance to play for the South Wales club which was accepted and he signed for them in July 1919. 

    Jimmy joined former England international and Aston Villa legend Joe Bache who had a place in the team on the wing as well as coaching the side, and ex-team mate from Sunderland Frank Pattison (outside right) in the Mid-Rhondda side.  Bache brought experience to the side having won an FA Cup winners medal in both 1905 and 1913. He was also a vital part of the Villa team that won the League Championship in 1910.
    They had a successful time in the seven months that Seed was with them, winning both the Southern League Division Two and Welsh League titles. 

Seed's good form attracted the attention of Tottenham Hotspur manager Peter McWilliam and in January (moved in February?) 1920 he signed for the north London side for a fee of £250, a move which caused some antagonism amongst supporters in Tonypandy.

Mid Rhondda FC was based in Tonypandy, a colliery town most famous for the Tonypandy riots.

'Brought to Mid Rhondda by Haydn Price'

Goalkeeper Harry Moody was born in Rochdale (Moody had won a DCM for gallantry on active service) and Jimmy Carmichael, although signed as a centre-half, soon gained a reputation as a marksmen, once scoring seven goals in a game.

He inevitably attracted the interest of League managers, including Peter McWilliam of Tottenham.
But McWilliam was more interested in Seed instead.

There´s an excellent academic article about the short but fascinating history of Mid Rhondda FC here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In 2016 I visited the Mid-Rhondda Sports ground which is still used as a municipal sports facility, but sadly, one which is under thread of re-development. There is an active 'Save the Mid-Rhondda Athletic Field' Facebook group here. 

There are still a few reminders of the original stand as you can see below:

The stand in the 1960s before demolition.

The Railing in front of the original stand.

The path that the players walked up from the nearby changing room to get to the pitch.

The original main gates

The nearby Ton Pentre ground

Jimmy's cartoon of Jimmy Carmichael (left) a forward, and goalkeeper Harry Moody, both of whom linked up with Seed at Mid-Rhondda.

Wiki:

1919–20 Season

    Of all the season's of the club's existence, 1919–20 was the most notable. With more funds available the committee of the Mid Rhondda Club made a decision to push the first team for promotion to the First Division, emulating Cardiff City. They turned to a local ex-international footballer Haydn Price to manage the team. He joined Mid Rhondda as secretary manager and immediately signed as captain former Aston Villa player, Joe Bache. Bache brought experience to the team, but it was the signing of an untested young player from Durham, Jimmy Seed, that would be Haydn's most important signing. Seed had started his career as a seventeen-year-old with Sunderland, and showed great potential in the reserves. During the war, Seed was posted to the front and was twice gassed in the trenches. On his return to training with Sunderland, he was told that because of lung problems his career was finished. Price disagreed and signed Seed.

    Seed played "non-stop football" from the time he joined Mid Rhondda, and his lungs appeared to recover. By the end of his first season Seed was signed by Tottenham Hotspur for £1,000 [others have said the fee was £250 or £350], and enjoyed a long career with both Spurs and Sheffield Wednesday, as well as making five appearances for England. Another notable player on Mid Rhondda's books at this time was future Wales international, Dai Collier.

    A highlight of the season was when Mid Rhondda played local rivals Ton Pentre in a preliminary round of the FA Cup. 20,000 spectators watched the game, filling the ground with many more covering the mountainside overlooking the pitch. More success was to come when the team won the Southern League Division Two, amassing 37 points over 20 games, losing none and drawing only three games. They then took the Welsh League title, beating Cardiff City into second place, losing just five of the thirty games. They completed the season with a third trophy, beating Barry F.C. 1–0 at Merthyr to take the South Wales Cup.

    The strength of the club at the time is best gauged by the challenge matches the team undertook against Football League clubs. Due to the large following the club possessed, they were able to offer incentives to league clubs to travel to Tonypandy. These were teams that normally played Bristol on the Saturday, then brought their first teams to the Rhondda for a Monday night encounter. Crowds in excess of 15,000 and the substantial win bonus that was offered elevated these games above friendlies. These encounters included wins over Nottingham Forest (3–1), Derby County (2–0) and Portsmouth (1–0) in 1919, a draw against Tottenham Hotspur and a narrow loss to Aston Villa (1–2) in 1920. 

Club demise ...

    The club and supporters expected continued success for the 1920–21 season in the First Division of the Southern League. A new stand was built, and other ground improvements were added, including a press box and a gymnasium. Then ready for the new season, the Southern League was invited to form a Third Division of the Football League. The current First Division of the Southern League became the new Third Division, and no promotions were accepted. Mid Rhondda remained in the Second Division.

    From this, the team disintegrated. Price left for Grimsby Town and took five players with him, while the remaining players of the previous season found different clubs. This was followed by a national coal strike in 1921 which crippled the South Wales valleys, and the Club was suspended by the Football Association of Wales for non-payment of debts. The club reformed in 1922, mainly thanks to voluntary donations from local miners, but now known as Mid Rhondda United. The club rejoined the Southern League for the 1924–25 season and applied for Football League membership in 1925. However the economic depression of the 1920s worsened, and there was real poverty in the Rhondda and there was little money for entertainment. The club continued until March 1928 when, with debts of £1,400, Mid Rhondda was forced to close when the banks called in its overdraft.