In 1976 Žiljak started playing for the senior team who were relegated the season before to the Yugoslav Second League - North.
He played at Kvarner for five seasons being in top positions in the Second League but failing to reach first place and gain promotion.
Žiljak had lost a few key players in the mist of there not being a league most prominently his captain Alvaro Načinović.
His first official league game as head coach was against Moslavina in a home win of 22:17 at Dvorana Mladosti.
The second match was played on September 23 at Dvorana Dinko Lukarić where Zamet won 18:11 and where eliminated from the tournament with Celje winning 35:36 on aggregate.
[4] After the fatal European loss Zamet's domestic results where bad compared to the previous season.
Although a solid result for a team back from the second tier the board sacked Žiljak at the end of the season.
After stunning results in the few past seasons RK Crikvenica was promoted to the newly created Croatian First League in 2001.
With this new progress Žiljak signed his old RK Zamet players Alvaro Načinović and Mladen Prskalo to strengthen his team.
The 2002-03 season ended up with them finishing in 11 place avoiding relegation play-offs again and reaching the quarter-finals of the Croatian Cup where they lost to RK Zagreb.
[9] Žiljak started his season with ŽRK Zamet on solid ground beating city rivals Orijent Proflex, Tvin Virovitica, Koka and others.
On August 29 Žiljak announced that he'd be stepping down as coach of ŽRK Zamet due to his new work environment being too much time consuming for him to run the team.
He saved the club from relegation, not losing a single home match with a team of young homegrown players and two Chinese imports.