Justin Leppitsch’s beaten and bruised Brisbane side have limped into an AFL bye that few teams have needed as badly.

The largely listless Lions slumped to their 10th loss in a row with Saturday’s 42-point defeat at the hands of Richmond at the MCG.

“We’ll have a good rest and recovery … the boys are pretty much needing it. It’s been a long campaign to date,” Leppitsch said.

“We really need the bye … you talk about young teams – we happened to draw the bye round on the last round (possible) as well.”

The Lions are 17th on the ladder, ahead of Essendon by percentage, with just one win in a dismal campaign but the embattled coach is adamant his team can play better football when they emerge from the bye.

“I think we’ve built enough consistency in our effort to know that, if we can work on a couple of our skill efficiencies, we’ll be ok,” he said.

“We’ve had a couple of injuries of late, which hasn’t helped us.”

Leppitsch was able to draw some positives from the loss to the Tigers, his side winning the final term and exciting young forward Eric Hipwood kicking three goals.

“I think, in a few years, we’ll have one of the best goal-to-goal lines in the competition – I have no doubt,” the coach said.

“We’re going to see the skinny side of Eric at times, but then we’re going to see the exciting side too, which he showed today.”