Cloke kicked three behinds in the first quarter and finished the game with 2.4 and one miskick when within range. It followed up from his 2.5 a week earlier.
His inability to make the most of early chances meant the Magpies could not apply scoreboard pressure on the Suns.
"It has come back to bite us on the arse eventually, hasn't it?" Buckley said.
Vote for your top three players following Saturday's loss to help decide who will take home the Magpie Army Player of the Year Award.
Noted for his inconsistency in front of goal, Cloke had kicked 12.2 in the three games before round 16 when he suddenly lost his radar.
Scott Pendlebury was frustrated too by the team's inability to convert with Tyson Goldsack also hitting the post from within range early in the game.
"[In the] first quarter we moved the ball really well. We had some easy shots in front of goal – like 30 metres out," Pendlebury said. "You have got to kick it."
However the coach did say Cloke was just one of a number of Magpies who did not take their chances against the Suns, making reference to a particularly costly turnover from Dane Swan that let the Suns' Seb Tape in for his first AFL goal as an example of the malaise that took over the Magpies.
"[We] butchered plenty of opportunities," Buckley said "I could rattle them off for you. There were six, seven, eight opportunities that we really should have converted especially early and then the game changes."
What causes games to change is one of sport's mysteries but Buckley boiled it down in this case to belief.
He called belief the key ingredient; football's economic lever that sends turns all ordinary players – to stretch the business jargon further – momentarily into good ones.
"You either take it [belief] away from the opposition and feed your own or the equation goes the other way," Buckley said. "And we didn't do enough early in the game to take Gold Coast's belief away and it challenged ours."
He said losing the clearances by nine in the second quarter compounded the problem of not taking its chances in the first.
"When you give a run on to a side like that it breeds hope [and] it breeds opportunity," Buckley said.
The inevitable questions came in relation to what could have been done from the coach's box to stop Gary Ablett.
Apart from a lasso, the predictable choice of pundits was Brent Macaffer to run with him. After all, he had done tagging jobs on Nick Dal Santo and Pearce Hanley earlier in the season.
Macaffer was however occupied with the busy long kicking defender Trent McKenzie.
So Buckley backed Swan and Dayne Beams to hurt the Suns as much the other way as Ablett was able to hurt Collingwood.
Ablett had 49 touches and kicked the match-winning goal when he escaped from a stoppage with Beams in his wake.
Buckley described the loss as disappointing and acknowledged that, like any loss, it would have ramifications for its season.
"What it does show is you need to be closer to your best to beat anyone and that is not being discriminatory to what Gold Coast is capable of and able to produce, but at our best we think we play pretty well," Buckley said. "We didn't play at our best tonight."
