Scotland midfielder Billy Gilmour is determined to use the pain of missing out on a World Cup place as fuel in his fledgling career.
The Scots were defeated 3-1 against Ukraine at Hampden Park, in a thoroughly disappointing performance by Steve Clarke’s men.
Ukraine will now advance to face Wales on Sunday for a place at this winter’s finals in Qatar.
Gilmour, who turns 21 later this month, has spent the season on loan at Norwich City from Chelsea.
Although he describes the play-off experience as one of the low points of his career, Gilmour is eager to emerge stronger from it.
Gilmour said: “It’s disappointing, a tough one.
“It’s one of the lows of my career so far and I don’t want to feel like this again.
“Hopefully next time it will be different. I think that’s what we’re all going to take into the next games coming up.
“We need to show that we aren’t just going to be at one tournament, we’re going to be competing in all of them.”
Ukraine outclassed Scotland despite the match being their first international fixture since November.
Gilmour refuted any suggestion the Scots were not mindful of the threat posed by their opponents.
He added: “They definitely didn’t surprise us. We knew they were a good team, we analysed them and you can see that they’ve got good players.
“They were the better team on the night.
“We knew what we needed to do, we had to come here and turn up, but on the night we just didn’t perform to our best.”
At the other end of the scale, the defeat will spell the end of goalkeeper Craig Gordon’s hopes of playing in a World Cup.
Gordon, who turns 40 later this year, said: “We are disappointed. To come this far and work so hard, to then lose this game is hard to take.
“We didn’t play our best and we can’t hide from that.
“We didn’t play like we wanted to and we can’t make any excuses.
“At the end we created chances and could have got back in it, but we didn’t manage that.
“A lot of the guys in there are young enough to go again and try for the World Cup.
“But it’s never nice when it ends this way – and that has happened too many times, especially for me personally.
“To come up short once again is hard to take.”
