Ulster finished the first block of six GUINNESS PRO12 fixtures in impressive fashion last weekend, ending Glasgow Warriors' unbeaten start to the season with a 29-9 victory at the Kingspan Stadium.
However they could not reproduce that display away at Leicester Tigers this weekend, beaten 25-18 after tries from Tommy Bowe and Franco van der Merwe were not enough to overturn a half-time deficit.
"When we have possession we have some decent players out there and when we're patient with the ball we can cause people problems but unfortunately we didn't do that," said Doak.
"We did create some lovely tries but there are two parts to the game and if you don't get the set piece right then we gave Leicester too much of a lead and found it hard to claw back.
"That was not a solid platform to set ourselves in the first half and we let Leicester into the game. We then didn't compose ourselves and make sure we had the right platform to play off.
"We struggled to retain possession tonight and that's obviously something we'll look to improve on next week.
"We had a few handling errors in the lineout and maybe the timing of the lifts were slightly off and when you don't have your set-piece against Leicester then it's a hard slog and they capitalised on a few things and put us under pressure and obviously got the points on the board.
"We had a couple of chances to get back into the game and on a better day we may have had the luck to do that."
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