James Marshall Seed (25 March 1895 – 16 July 1966) was an English footballer and football manager. Despite being born in Blackhill, Seed was brought up in the village of Whitburn on the coast just to the north of Sunderland, the family moving when Seed was two years old. Playing career On leaving school at fourteen, Seed worked at Whitburn colliery and when he reached sixteen played football in the Wearside League for Whitburn, along with his brother Angus who would have a short professional career with Leicester Fosse. After scoring over eighty goals for Whitburn, Seed had unsuccessful trials at South Shields and Sunderland. However, Sunderland manager Bob Kyle decided to give Seed a second chance, this time playing him at inside right instead of centre forward in a North Eastern League match against Wallsend. Seed scored a hat-trick in the match and was promptly signed by Sunderland as a professional in April 1914. Sunderland and First World War Seed spent the 1914–15 season playing in Sunderland reserves, he scored plenty of goals as the team lifted the Durham Senior Cup. Competitive league football was suspended at the end of that season because of the outbreak of World War I. At the end of the season, the 20-year-old Seed joined the Army Cyclist Corps. In the summer of 1916, he was drafted to France with the 8th battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. In July 1917 Seed was gassed when a German aeroplane dropped mustard gas bombs over Nieuwpoort, Belgium. Seed was with other soldiers sheltering in the basement of a bombed out building when the gas seeped in. Over fifty of his comrades died in the incident. He was sent to England to convalesce and returned to France in August 1918, until being evacuated after being gassed in Valenciennes, France two months later. With the cessation of hostilities, Seed played a Victory League match for Sunderland against Durham City in 1918, however his lungs were weak and he had a poor game. On the strength of that performance the Sunderland directors decided that Seed's wartime experience had finished him as a footballer and let him go, although they did not put him on the transfer list as they thought his lungs were too damaged. Seed never played an official first team game for Sunderland. He was discharged from the army in March 1919. Mid Rhondda Seed's football career