Scotland back-row Blair Cowan has challenged his side to use their performance in the quarter-finals of the Rugby World as a benchmark for their future displays.

Vern Cotter's side were just one minute short of becoming the only Northern Hemisphere side to make the last four of the competition, but Bernard Foley's late penalty condemned them to a heartbreaking 35-34 defeat at Twickenham this afternoon.

Even so, the match was much closer than many had predicted and represented a big improvement from the performance in this year's Six Nations, when Scotland picked up the wooden spoon.

After the match, New Zealand-born Cowan spoke to Sports Mole about the performance and why it points to a bright future for Scottish rugby.

Is it possible to sum up your emotions after a defeat like that?

"Devastated. To be fair it's a mix of emotions. There are a lot of boys out there who I won't see for a long time and you become very close, what we've been through together from the off with gruelling training right through to almost making history going through to the semi.

"It's mixed emotions, but we've got to learn from that experience and we've just shown the world that we're true contenders."

There must be a fair chunk of pride involved too? After all, you pushed the tournament's second favourites all the way to the wire...

"Absolutely. Obviously the boys were just reflecting on the loss immediately after the game, Vern came in and said 'As devastated as you are, hold your head high. You went out there, we asked you to stand up as men and you did', and that's something I think I'll take away from his end-of-game speech.

"We were written off, so to go out there and put in a performance like that, deservedly or not losing, but to do that and have six other nations cheering for us was pretty amazing."

Most of the pre-match predictions, and the bookies, had you losing this one comfortably - did that underdog status spur you on?

"It's always a bit of a feeder, but we always had self-belief in the camp. We kept it to ourselves. You've got to have belief and we definitely did that.

"We stuck to our job and we're a humble bunch of boys so we'll push on from that and look towards the Six Nations and hopefully keep that performance as a standard we can continue from."

How far has this team come from the side that lost every game at this year's Six Nations?

"The last Six Nations was a funny one. We finished at the bottom but there were some outstanding performances. Once again we played outstanding but we didn't get the result. We've just got to start swinging these results our way. I think everyone is aware of what we can produce."