Devastated Ryan Porteous apologised to the Hibs fans for falling at the final hurdle.
The big defender and the rest of the Hibees squad were left heartbroken as they lost the Scottish Cup Final by single goal to St Johnstone.
The Easter Road club had already sealed third place and could have made history by lifting the glorious old trophy.
But their campaign ended in misery and pain as Shaun Rooney scored the winner at Hampden.
Porteous said: “We have achieved so much and come a long way in a short space of time. We have done well in the cup competitions, you can’t fault the players’ efforts, but I just feel we have let the fans and gaffer down on occasions.
“There are a lot of boys in there who will go on to big things. They’ll get other opportunities but it’s still gut-wrenching to lose out in a final.
“It’s part and parcel of football, we just have to dust ourselves down because we have a big pre-season ahead of us.
“There are boys who have big international games coming up and they can’t be too down for too long. We just need to try to recover from this.”
The defender, still only 22, insisted his team had given everything on the pitch this season but admitted yesterday’s final was a bridge too far.
The stopper said: “We have a very close group in there. I’ve not been in many other dressing rooms but it will be hard to beat our one.
“We have a great group of boys and I am gutted for everybody in there. We had the need-to-win mentality but it just wasn’t to be at the end.
“At the goal, you could argue Kane was sitting on the ball for a few seconds and it could have been a foul but when the ball comes in we have to deal with it.
“It was one of those days but credit where it is due because St Johnstone have been fantastic in cup competitions this season and deserved their win.”
Every one of Jack Ross ’ players will harbour the hurt for days if not weeks and Porteous knows they need to use that agony to come back stronger.
He said: “We have a young squad mixed with experience as well. Some of the boys have been through that heartbreak before. Some of them will go through it again but I’m one of the boys who wants to learn from it.
“Next time I don’t want to be in a situation like this again. Next time I want to take advantage of things.
“But I also want to learn from this and that’s all you can do. I don’t think you should always learn by losing, sometimes you learn from doing things right. But this is the situation just now and there are a lot of boys in there who will go on to big things and be in this position again. It’s about rectifying that.”
Porteous is being tracked by the likes of Millwall and Queen’s Park Rangers but didn’t want to be drawn into speculation over a summer move to the English Championship.
He said: “As I have said before it is a lifelong dream to win a medal with Hibs and for it to be snatched away from you like that then I would always feel like I have some unfinished business if I leave it at that. But every player wants to play at the top level.
“I just don’t think this is the right time to talk about it.
“After such a big disappointment I think it would be disrespectful to the fans if we started to talk about players leaving.”
Porteous also knows after securing a third-place finish in the Premiership, Hibs will eventually be able to look back and class season 2020-21 as a success.
He said: “It has been really tough and at one point we were nine or 10 points behind Aberdeen, who also had a game in hand.
“At that point we would have taken fourth but we are a squad that wants to achieve more.
“It has been a record-breaking season and it would have been the best one ever if we had won the cup but it just wasn’t to be. It wasn’t through a lack of effort though.”
There is also European football to look forward to but that will be in the Europa League Conference.
Porteous said: “It’s European football. It’s something for the fans to look forward to back at Easter Road.
“It was a round we didn’t want to go into but we need to take what we have been given.
“We need to make a fast start in pre-season to go again. We have bounced back from disappointment before losing semis and now a final.
“I’m sure next year the team will want to go one step further and get that cup.”
