It was a pitch he couldn’t reject.
Longtime Hofstra men’s soccer coach Richard Nuttall is retiring from his post after what will be 37 seasons of success with the Pride at the end of this fall.
Nevertheless, it was fate that put Nuttall in a position to win eight Colonial Athletic Association conference championships — four of which came consecutively from 2021-24 — in the first place.
“I was playing for the Glen Cove soccer club … and I heard of this part-time job with very little resources,” Nuttall, originally of Yorkshire, England, told The Post of his early days on Long Island in the late 1980s.
Fortunately for the university, Glen Cove had been comprised of “80 percent Hofstra” players — including Nuttall’s friend, Jim Kilmeade, who now operates American Soccer Club out of the Nassau school’s field.
“When the job came up, we pushed Richie to take it,” Kilmeade told The Post. “Now, over the 30-plus years, he’s turned it into one of the top programs in the country.”
Swayed by his mates, Nuttall thought time at Hofstra would be a worthwhile endeavor for two years, and he would then head to Australia, where he previously played.
Rather than trekking to the land down under, the story goes that Nuttall fell in love with “the university, the campus and the area,” which was quite different than the farmland he grew up on.
“I love the people, from the custodians we’ve got, like Lefty and Nelson … all the way up to the president of the university,” said the coach, who will be stepping into an advisory role at the end of the upcoming campaign.
For Nuttall, who also spent years developing youth programs in Massapequa and Brentwood, it’s all about greatness on and off the field, he said.
“We won a lot of games, lots of championships,” he said. “But my biggest pleasure these days is seeing our players become loads of incredibly successful people.
“I’m not just talking monetarily, I’m talking family-wise, people-wise. We’ve got a gamut of everything from doctors, investors, bankers, teachers, coaches and all walks of life. I would say 90 to 95 percent still keep in touch. So I’m proud of that, too.”
