Almost link up with love (3)
I believe the answer is:
nil
'love' is the definition.
(love and nil mean zero in cricket and football)
'almost link up' is the wordplay.
'almost' means to remove the last letter (almost the whole word is kept).
'up' shows that the letters should be reversed in order (in down clue: letters go upwards).
'link' with its final letter taken away is 'lin'.
'lin' back-to-front is 'NIL'.
'with' is the link.
(Other definitions for nil that I've seen before include "Nothing, no score" , "Latin zero" , "Nothing, zero" , "none" , "Lacking value" .)