Players twice embraced a reject (4,5)
I believe the answer is:
cast aside
'reject' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'players twice embraced a' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'players' could be 'side' (eg a football side) and 'side' is found within the answer.
'a' is found 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 cast aside that I've seen before include "dropped" , "Get rid of" , "Ditch" .)