Hirst struck as Ipswich won comfortably 4-1 on Saturday.
“A tough place to come,” he said. “They’ve been on a really good run of form at the minute and we knew that coming into the game that we had to start well, and that’s exactly what we did.
“It was a case of coming out here, putting on a good performance and ultimately getting through to the next round.
“My name is up on the sheet in the changing room so there was nobody else taking that one other than me.
“It was big, obviously you want to score as soon as possible in every single game. To then concede five minutes later is not ideal but I think we showed great character and great response to that and ultimately deserved to be 3-1 up at half-time.
“It’s definitely one of those things where it can be not going your way in the league and almost be a bit of a break and a bit of a reset button. Today we used it as an opportunity to get boys minutes and go and win the game but also to work on a few things.
“We’ve had a lot of new players and it’s another opportunity to go out there and better the relationships on and off the pitch. The cup can definitely be that for us, it can definitely be a catalyst and another chance to improve and hopefully we can take that into the league games.”