One of the things about covering sporting events, and particularly Olympic or athletic events, is the frequency with which one experiences meaningful music – or at least, music which is meant to be meaningful.

Every medal ceremony national anthem is deeply important to the athlete or competitor standing atop the rostrum, and to hosts of associated supporters, family members and officials.

But not necessarily to the journalists covering the event. There have been days in stadiums around the world where, with the best will in that world, the medal ceremony music has come to resemble some kind of Groundhog Anthem as the United States, or Russia, have cleaned up.

As for standing to attention whenever a national anthem is played – sorry, I was disabused of that polite notion in straightforward language many years ago by a vastly more experienced colleague from another paper (The Sun) who also liked to observe occasionally to painfully enthusiastic young reporters: "We're not here to watch it – we're here to report it."

The essence of my old friend's advice was this: once you start standing for national anthems, you will be up and down like a fiddler's elbow, and you will never get the chance to write and file your copy properly.

There was, though, a point of etiquette involved: If you are making a decision not to stand for national anthems, you can't suddenly waive the policy when your own country's tune gets an airing.

At several sporting competitions, thankfully, any awkwardness around this judgement was removed by dint of the fact that no Briton troubled the man in charge of anthem recordings. I'm thinking now of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where the only British winners were the rowing pair of Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent, whose victory took place, naturally enough, many miles away from the main stadium. No moral debates there.

Steve Redgrave (left) and Matthew Pinsent, winners of the rowing coxless pairs, were Britain's only gold medallists at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics ©AllSport/Getty Images

And yet...many is the time the patent effect upon those receiving medals has had powerful echo within the stadium. There have been occasions down the years when, for all the verbal belabouring of my old friend, I have felt tears spring in my eyes at the sight of a face being tugged and stressed by emotion.

And here's the thing – almost always, this moment of sentiment comes when music is playing. What the sense of taste and smell is to memory – thank you Marcel – the sound of music is to emotion.

I can remember once making my way to the press box at the old Wembley Stadium before an England game and seeing David Baddiel and Frank Skinner in the stand as Three Lions - the song for which they had provided the lyrics (with Ian Broudie doing the music) – was playing, and being taken up enthusiastically by the crowd. They looked genuinely moved.

The vivid shorthand of their words, with its nods to salient points of English footballing history – "That tackle by Moore", referring to the England captain's forensic removal of the ball from the feet of Brazil's Jairzinho during the 1970 World Cup finals, "and Nobby dancing", referring to the Manchester United midfielder's jig with the Jules Rimet trophy in the wake of England's 1966 World Cup final victory – is a big reason for the song's enduring popularity.

Nobby Stiles (right) tries to get his England manager Alf Ramsey to take part in a lap of honour with the Jules Rimet trophy - being passed to him by captain Bobby Moore - after England's World Cup victory in 1966. Ramsey, naturally, refused. ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

But Three Lions is a song that will always be sung affectionately, rather than passionately.

While on the subject of Wembley – new rather than old – one of the most dismal features of the belatedly completed stadium is the banal attempt to guide supporters' celebrations by ramming on tiresome anthems – Queen's We Are The Champions and Tina Turner's Simply The Best being prime offenders – the moment matches are over.

Other sporting songs arrive spontaneously, and with deeper resonance. In 2007, when Ireland's rugby union team had to play at the Gaelic football and hurling cathedral of Croke Park because of the demolition of the Lansdowne Road stadium, a 43-13 victory over England was punctuated by a large part of the 80,000 crowd with a swelling rendition of The Fields of Athenry, the Irish folk ballad set during the Great Irish Famine (1845-1850) which features a fictional character named Michael who is sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay after stealing "Trevelyan's corn" to feed his starving family. Trevelyan was a senior British civil servant in Ireland at that time. It sounded like a huge emotional and political statement.

Marcus Horan raises an arm in salute of Ireland's second try in their 43-13 win over England at Croke Park in the 2007 Six Nations rugby union tournament. The match witnessed a massive, spontaneous rendition of The Fields of Athenry ©AFP/Getty Images

But in what has been a sombre week for sport, given Tuesday's anniversaries of the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, and last year's bombing at the Boston Marathon, music has become once again a mysterious medium of mass emotion.

For the Bostonians who gathered in wind and rain at the Boylston Street finish line, a single voice singing God Bless America provided the equivalent of an emotional tuning fork.

The ceremony held in Boston on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing ©Getty Images

As for those who remembered the tragic events of the 1989 FA Cup semi-final, when 96 Liverpool fans perished in the Leppings Lane End of Sheffield Wednesday's stadium in circumstances which, a quarter of a century on, are in the process of being properly re-examined – they have had their own anthem to provide a conduit for their deep grief, their deep hope.

At Tuesday's anniversary ceremony at Anfield the song which Rogers and Hammerstein wrote for the 1945 musical Carousel, and which has become synonymous with Liverpool –You'll Never Walk Alone – was sung by the Liverpudlian who had a big hit with it in 1963, Gerry Marsden.

The song is regularly sung at Anfield. Indeed, its title is incorporated into the Shankly Gate entrance commemorating Liverpool's former manager Bill Shankly.

But Sunday's pre-match rendition at the weekend was extraordinary in its intensity and power. Not because the visitors were Manchester City, one of Liverpool's key rivals for the Premier League title. But because of the imminence of an anniversary which will forever be part wound, part healing.

Liverpool fans await their team's bus before last Sunday's match against Manchester City ©Getty Images

Signing off Tuesday evening's Newsnight on BBC Two, Jeremy Paxman referred to that day's anniversary ceremony at Anfield, but then concluded: "We leave you not with that, but with the voice of the Anfield Kop two days earlier before Sunday's game, when it felt like it was more than just a football game the people of Liverpool had finally won."

The music began in a stadium vivid with red scarves, many of them bearing the word Justice – a reference to the long struggle to get the Establishment to acknowledge and investigate the truth of what happened on that desperate afternoon. The music was soon submerged under a mass of human voices in defiant, sonorous accord. The intensity was unforgettable; this is what music can do.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.