Struck and played gripping top of five iron (8)
I believe the answer is:
affected
'struck' is the definition.
('affected' can be similar in meaning to 'struck')
'played gripping top of five iron' is the wordplay.
'played' becomes 'acted' ('act' can be a synonym of 'play'**).
'gripping' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'top of' suggests taking the first letters.
'iron' becomes 'fe' (Fe is the chemical symbol for iron).
The first letter of 'five' is 'f'.
'f'+'fe'='ffe'
'acted' going around 'ffe' is 'AFFECTED'.
'and' is the link.
(Other definitions for affected that I've seen before include "Pretentious, designed to impress" , "Stirred" , "attacked" , "False - unnatural" , "Pretended; artificial" .)