LAHORE, July 20: Pakistan junior coach Tahir Zaman refuses to step down despite accepting responsibility for poor seventh position of his team in the June 29-July 10 Junior World Cup held in Holland.

Addressing a press conference the former Olympian defiantly declared that the coaching was his bread and butter and he would not quit and continue to coach his club and department.

Tahir’s defiance is not surprising in Pakistan as no one in this country steps down gracefully even after having failure after failure. “I am still available for national duty and it is up to the PHF to consider me either for the seniors or juniors,” the coach said.

Tahir pointed out three reasons for the debacle saying: “The players, mainly seniors did not act according to the game plan, secondly the unanimous decision of sending junior players to play Azlan Shah Cup with seniors prior to the mega event fired back and thirdly failure of penalty-corner conversion are main root causes.

“The critics always blame coaches but I will suggest them to also consider the performance of the players and decide if it was up to the mark,” he said. “Our youngsters need a lot to improve their skill. You can not repeat each point or game plan time and again,” he said.

The ‘think tank’ including selectors, team management of seniors and juniors and the PHF had unanimously decided to induct junior players in the Azlan Shah Cup’s team but the decision did not bear fruits and had negative impact on the boys.

“There was heated debate over different options before unanimously deciding to send the juniors for Azlan Shah Cup and now all are responsible,” he said. Imran Warsi failed to keep up the ratio of penalty-corner conversions despite the fact he was given half of the short-corner the team earned in the tournament.

“After Warsi’s failure we did try Muhammad Imran but no satisfactory results could be achieved,” he said. Tahir did not agree with the PHF secretary that the team was mishandled by the management. “I don’t know in which context the secretary said it and to me all was fine”.

However, he said the secretary might not be satisfied with the handling of the affairs related to physical fitness of the players. “Yes, the fitness of the players was not up to the mark and here I agree with the secretary,” he said. He advised the former Olympians to avoid criticizing him and the team since they had not seen the matches of the World Cup.

“Their criticism is for the sake of criticism and most of them are not even fully aware of the rules of the game,” he said. Most of them had been with the team in last 20 years, but they had also failed to deliver, he said. He showed ignorance that various managers who had worked with him quit because of his attitude.

“I don’t know who expressed such feelings about me,” he said. Asked why he accepted the coaching of the junior team just five months before the World Cup, he said that he was expecting that coaching to the upcoming talent was an easy task because “you could mould them easily, but I felt they (boys) need an improvement in communication skill”.