Brighton Bears owner Romek Kriwald today gave his backing to the team's coach Mark Dunning.

Wednesday's overtime defeat by Birmingham Bullets left the Bears rooted to the bottom of the southern conference ahead of tomorrow's trip to leaders London Towers, a side Dunning regards as the strongest in the league.

Bears have lost 12 of their last 13 games and Dunning, who took over just a year ago, has steered the team to just three league wins so far this season.

But Kriwald has no plans to change the coach and is looking instead at ways of improving the playing roster before the January 31 deadline.

"Mark's position is not an issue at the moment, I regard him very highly and he has my full support," said Kriwald.

"Technically, he is one of the best coaches in the country and the time he puts in trying to improve our guys is second to none.

"As the owner I have to look at all aspects of the club and see what I can do to improve things.

"We are underperforming and I have to ask myself what I can do to help, whether I should get more involved than just paying the wages.

"But I won't tell Mark what to do. He is as frustrated as me about the results and is working hard to improve them."

Tomorrow's game is the halfway point in Bears' season and if they are to have any chance of reaching the play-offs they probably need to win 13 or 14 of their 21 remaining games.

But a worrying injury list is undermining their attempts at regaining the winning thread. Skipper Michael Brown is still out while he recovers from a torn thigh muscle and Wilbur Johnson will need intensive treatment in the build-up to tomorrow's match after injuring his achilles towards the end of Wednesday's match.

The loss of Johnson would be a big blow to Bears. He top-scored with 26 points against Bullets as well as pulling down ten rebounds.

Dunning admits his side have 'forgotten what it takes to win games.'

He said: "Confidence is a bit low, but there were some positives on Wednesday which we have to build on.

"When we ran our offence we did pretty good and for decent spells our defence was effective.

"But we don't do enough of either to win the game."