JOE Keyes believes the Bulls must learn to stop "over-playing" in possession as they prepare for their do-or-die clash at home to Swinton.

Bradford were guilty of trying to force the pass at times in their latest defeat against Batley and half-back Keyes admits more patience is needed in building attacks.

He said: "We spoke about it at half-time on Sunday. That's where we need to improve. We need to stop over-playing and learn to grind it out.

"We can take some positives out of the Batley game but we do need to be better. We need to grind teams down.

"We don't have to beat them straight away, we can do it in the 79th minute. We're going to focus on that this week."

The Bulls' task to climb out of the bottom two in the Championship looks increasingly like a lost cause.

Yet Keyes insists they have not given up hope of clawing back an 11-point deficit as they focus on Sunday's visit of Swinton, who yesterday promoted assistant coach Stuart Littler to the Lions hot seat following John Duffy's move to take charge at Featherstone.

Keyes said: "If there was no belief, we wouldn't be here. We all believe and we want to stay up, so that's our goal.

"Losing to Batley was a tough one to take. We stuck with them for most of the game. It was just a five-minute switch off which cost us.

"We can takes some positives in that they are a big, physical side and we stayed with them for most of the game but obviously we were disappointed.

"All we can do is keep working hard and look at where we went wrong and try to fix it up for this week."