A Newtown youth footballer had to wait seven hours on the pitch for an ambulance after breaking his leg this weekend.

Newtown FC have insisted, however, that they understand the pressures the ambulance service is facing after the lengthy wait for help in drizzly conditions at the home of Cefn Druids in Cefn Mawr, Wrexham, on Sunday.

Llewelyn Jerman suffered a clean break of both bones in his lower leg following a tackle in the under 16s academy league clash.

However Newtown coach Craig Williams insisted the club understood the pressures the NHS and ambulance service were under with coronavirus still impacting health services across Wales.

He said: "It was a fair tackle from both players, a complete 50/50 where both players made contact with the ball with no intent or malice from either side.

"It’s just one of those things that’s happened, as things do sometimes on a football pitch.

"Llewelyn is seeing a specialist today to see how to proceed from here in terms of his recovery."

Mr Williams also praised the home club for their support.

"Druids staff were superb, they made the lad as comfortable as possible, called 999 repeatedly to request updates and make sure they knew the condition of Llewelyn, and looked after us as coaches and family too so credit to them," he added.

"We definitely don’t feel let down by the ambulance, obviously the seven-hour wait wasn’t a good situation for anyone and in an ideal world wouldn’t have happened at all.

"However we believe the hospital in Wrexham was extremely busy, obviously Covid is still around so we imagine that slows the process down in between patients as potentially everything needs to be cleaned and sterilised.

"We also realise that potentially the NHS may be understaffed at times too which could all contribute to slow response times."

Williams also pointed to the treatment the teenager received when the paramedics arrived at the Rock Stadium.

He said: "When the ambulance staff arrived they dealt with Llewelyn and the family really well and talked him through everything they were doing to make sure he was as comfortable and did everything as quickly and efficiently as possible

"At the end of the day all our thoughts are with Llewelyn, who dealt with the situation remarkably well and is a credit to himself and his family."

Liz Wedley, ambulance operations manager in north Wales said: "Demand for our services at the time of this incident were high across north Wales and it took us longer to reach non-life-threatening cases than we would like.

"Our resources were already committed to patients in the community or awaiting patient admission to hospitals across the Health Board area.

"We appreciate this was a very distressing situation for Mr Jerman, his family and his team mates.

"We sincerely apologise to Mr Jerman and wish him well for a full recovery.

"Direct contact from the family would be welcomed should they wish to discuss our response in more detail."