Sports articles covering league responses (9)
I believe the answer is:
athletics
'sports' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'articles covering league responses' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'league' could be 'l' (abbreviation) and 'l' is present in the answer.
'articles' could be 'athe' ('a' and 'the', indefinite and definite articles) and 'athe' is located in the remaining letters.
The remaining letters 'tics' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for athletics that I've seen before include "Lithe acts (anag)" , "Lithe acts performed in physical sports" , "Track and field events" , "Lithe acts observed in sporting contests" , "on the track, perhaps" .)