Have recourse to a sporting official (5)
I believe the answer is:
refer
'have recourse to' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'a sporting official' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'official' could be 'ref' (match official in football, say) and 'ref' is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'er' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for refer that I've seen before include "Relate" , "Pass" , "Direct elsewhere" , "Be relevant (to)" , "Mention, cite" .)