David Denton insists Scotland will look to bounce back from their Wooden Spoon shame by winning this year’s World Cup.
The Dark Blues had a nightmare RBS 6 Nations as they lost all five games, suffering their third whitewash in 11 years.
But Edinburgh number eight Denton believes the Scots can brush off their embarrassment by lifting the Webb Ellis Cup at Twickenham on October 31.
Scotland have been drawn in Pool B alongside South Africa, Samoa, Japan and the US. They kick-off their World Cup bid on September 23 against the Japanese in Gloucester.
Asked if he still believed the side would look to challenge the best nations in the world for the trophy, he replied: “Yes”.
Pushed further on that statement, he added: “I understand it’s hard to see. Our first goal is to get out of the pool and then give ourselves every chance of winning the World Cup.
“We never change our views on what we can achieve. We are in this sport to win. There is no doubt about that. There is a process to getting there – we need to get out of our pool first.
“We’re in a tough pool – it could have been worse. We have tough games particularly against South Africa and Samoa that we need to make sure we perform well in.
“It’s a pool I think we can do well in and then if we get a favourable quarter-final we move on from there. You just need to take it one game at time and that’s what we are going to do.”
Scotland ended their campaign with another hard-luck story as Ireland steamrollered their way to a thrilling title triumph with a 40-10 win.
And Denton admits it was not the way he saw the championships going.
“Today was a disappointing end to a disappointing campaign,” he said. “We came in to this competition with a lot of ambition and the prospect of winning the trophy. We came in thinking we were a good enough team to do that.
“But a few of the results didn’t go our way and today we weren’t good enough.
“There are a lot of things we can improve on and we will do.
“Was it realistic to think we can win the title? One hundred per cent. There was no ambiguity about. (Coach) Vern (Cotter) said it at the start and we all believed it.
“We went into the France game thinking if we win in Paris things could start turning our way.”