Take a hand in a sporting way (9)

I believe the answer is:

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'take a hand in a sporting' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't judge whether this works.

'way' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'way' could be 'rd' (short for road) and 'rd' 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?

I've seen this clue in The Irish News.

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