Ipswich had a 2-0, but eventually were beaten 4-3 after Bryan Mbeumo's winner six minutes into injury-time.
Hirst later said: “A tough way to end if I’m honest but a hell of a lot of positives in there and that’s what we need to focus on.
“We will look at what went wrong and why we conceded four goals because we don’t want to do that, especially away from home because you’re not going to win games. That’s something for us to work on, but also a lot of positives in there.
“Naturally very deflating, to go and lose the game in that way is never nice. Whether it’s your only loss all season or whether you’ve lost 30 games before that, you’re going to feel the same way to lose a game like that.
“Ultimately the feeling between the boys is we did a hell lot of things right and scored some really good goals. Because of that, any time you concede four you’re going to make it hard to get anything from the game.
“The fact that we nearly did says a lot about how we played and I think we showed a lot of character out there. A hell of a lot of positives but also some things to work on.”
He also said: "It’s fine moments ultimately, is it mistakes that we’re making or is it really good play from them?
“They also conceded two goals in three minutes to us and no-one will speak about that because they won the game.
“We didn’t win the game so people will turn around and say we conceded two very quickly before half-time and rightly so, we shouldn’t do that but that’s what happens, that’s football.
“We went in at half-time and we weren’t down, we were saying we’re right in this game and we’ve shown that in the first 45 minutes.
“It didn’t go our way in the second half but that is football and all we can do is keep working hard and try and eradicate the things that didn’t go our way today.”