Danny Care in action against Castres © Getty Images

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Harlequins director of rugby Conor O'Shea says his side will learn from their agonising exit from the European Champions Cup.

Quins scored seven tries in beating Castres 47-9 but exited due to having the same number of points as Wasps, who had a better record in clashes between the two so remain in contention to advance.

O'Shea praised his side's performance against Castres, but was well aware their 23-3 home defeat to Wasps last weekend cost them dear as they crashed out of Europe "by inches".

"We could only control what we could control today," he said. "You can't rely on others and that's the position we left ourselves in. I thought we played some pretty good rugby in difficult conditions.

"We lacked accuracy last week, despite all the chances we had. Not getting anything out of that game cost us, but Europe is all about learning and our young players have learned an unbelievable amount this season. We've gone out by inches, but that's the European Cup for you. We'll learn from it, but we'll also use the hurt to drive us on for the remainder of the season."

"I'm very disappointed, but we fought tooth and nail to get to this stage, we've fought our way back into the Premiership, and I think anyone who has watched us over the last eight games has seen a team that is much more like itself.

"We have to give the month of February one heck of a rattle and see what we can get for the rest of the season, but we'll learn and this sort of thing will drive us. We did what we needed to do today. We didn't control anything else and, unfortunately, now I won't really have any interest in watching anything."

Man of the match Nick Evans admitted it was a bittersweet result for Harlequins.

"We gave ourselves a chance," he said. "What let us down was last week. That's why it was important that we gave ourselves the best possible chance this week. Which we did. It wasn't good enough. We knew that coming into the game we had to rely on other results and that was probably the frustrating thing.

"We could have moped after last week, because we knew the hill that we had to climb this week, but we didn't. The boys stuck to their guns. I know it wasn't Castres' strongest team, but it was a pretty good one - and to score seven tries is good momentum for us."