Contact with rugby player about excellent start to season (7)
I believe the answer is:
liaison
'contact' is the definition.
(I know that contact can be written as liaison)
'rugby player about excellent start to season' is the wordplay.
'rugby player' becomes 'lion' (the Lions, Great Britain's rugby league team).
'about' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'excellent' becomes 'ai' (resembles 'A1', old-fashioned term for excellent).
'start to' suggests taking the first letters.
The first letter of 'season' is 's'.
'ai'+'s'='ais'
'lion' enclosing 'ais' is 'LIAISON'.
'with' is the link.
(Other definitions for liaison that I've seen before include "Fling - intrigue" , "Mil. coordination; illicit affair" , "entanglement" , "Communication between people or organisations" , "Mediator" .)