Extremely hungry top player takes year out from competing (8)
I believe the answer is:
starving
'extremely hungry' is the definition.
'starving' can be an answer for 'hungry' (thesaurus). I'm unsure of the 'extremely' bit.
'top player takes year out from competing' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'top' could be 'star' (eg a top player is a star player) and 'star' is present in the answer.
'from' could be 'in' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'in' is present in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for starving that I've seen before include "Ravenous, really hungry" , "certainly not scoffing" , "Dying of hunger" , "Suffering from lack of food" , "feeling famished" .)