Lovely trapping first of pheasants -- game
I believe the answer is:
cup tie
'game' is the definition.
(cup tie is a kind of game)
'lovely trapping first of pheasants' is the wordplay.
'lovely' becomes 'cutie' (I've seen this before).
'trapping' is an insertion indicator.
'first of' says to take the initial letters.
The first letter of 'pheasants' is 'p'.
'cutie' enclosing 'p' is 'CUP-TIE'.
(Other definitions for cup tie that I've seen before include "Knockout match" , "Sports match" , "Football championship match" , "Knockout fixture in a competition" , "Game in knock-out competition" .)