The old Kenny Rogers hit, The Gambler, has become the unofficial anthem of the rugby World Cup: You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, Know when to walk away and know when to run. First, Matt Stevens, the England tight-head prop, played it on the guitar during practice sessions. Then the entire team sang it before beating Australia.

In the run-up to the match against France, Rogers himself sent a video declaring that he was “mighty proud that you guys found something in it to be your inspiration”. After defeating the French, Mike Catt, the inside centre, declared that the song had become a “lucky charm”; and tomorrow, all over the country, superstitious rugby fans will be belting out the twangy refrain as England take on South Africa.

If you’re gonna play the game, Boy, ya gotta learn to play it right. The Gambler is, of course, corny, sentimental and faintly embarrassing, but also, like much American country music (or country and western, as it used to be called), it is uplifting in an uncomplicated, entertaining and immediately memorable way. Rogers’s ballad tells the story of a young man down on his luck, “out of aces” and reduced to his last swallow of whiskey, who finds inspiration in the advice of a dying gambler. It is about picking yourself up when you have been hammered, and the importance of changing tactics. No wonder the England team have adopted it, as abject defeat has been transformed into the prospect of World Cup victory.

And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.
But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

The revival of the England team and the revival of Kenny Rogers should also prompt a revival of American country music in Britain, one of the most unjustly neglected musical genres. I have always loved country and western: for its simple melodies, self-absorption, fierce self-mockery and lyrics that are often inspired, and frequently hilarious.

These are songs about broken relationships, basic pleasures, failure, redemption, hangovers and God. One should always listen to country music backwards, that way your wife don’t leave you, your dog don’t die, and you end up sober.

The veteran country singer George Jones once observed that this “is heartfelt music that speaks to the common man. Country music should speak directly and simply about the highs and lows of life. Something that anyone can relate to.” One of the reasons for Bill Clinton’s popularity was his ability to speak in fluent country and western lyrics.

Much country music is maudlin, schmaltzy nonsense, but at its best it can also be poetic, catchy and extremely funny. No pop musical genre is so adept at self-parody, or so skilled at wordplay and irony. Most modern pop lyrics are quite breathtakingly bad. Last week Sting was voted the worst lyricist in history by Blender magazine, for his “mountainous pomposity”, and in particular for inserting an entirely spurious reference to Lolita into his song Don’t Stand So Close to Me:

He starts to shake and cough,
Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov.

Country music lyrics, by contrast, are often intentionally ludicrous, and wildly inventive. On the subject of love: “Her teeth were stained but her heart was pure”; on regret: “If I’d killed you when I met you/ I’d be out of jail by now,” or “I only miss you on days that end in ‘y’ ”; on lack of regret: “My wife ran off with my best friend, and I miss him,” or “Don’t cry on my shoulder/ ‘cause you’re rusting my spurs”; on domestic violence: “Get the hammer Mama, there’s a fly on Papa’s head”; on domestic harmony: “Get your biscuits in the oven, and your buns in the bed”; on resentment: “She got the ring and I got the finger,” or its variant “She got the gold mine and I got the shaft”; or the straightforward “You’re the reason our kids are so ugly.”

An entire subsection of country music is devoted to men telling women they aren’t sorry: “The next time you throw the frying pan, my face ain’t gonna be there”; “I don’t know whether to kill myself, or go bowling,” and “When the phone don’t ring, you’ll know it’s from me.”

But there is also a strong feminist strain, of women telling men where to get off: “Did I shave my legs for this?” or “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” and “I’ll be damned/ If I go home/ With a Wild Turkey like you.”

Perhaps the greatest country lyric of all time, reflecting the genre in all its glorious pathos, is this:

Since you bought the waterbed
We’ve slowly drifted apart.

From the Rhinestone Cowboy to the fifteen stone rugby player is no great distance. Kenny Rogers’s crooning has given the England rugby team a crucial lift, and there is much more in country music philosophy where that came from. When facing the Springboks pack, may I recommend Ray Wylie Hubbard’s ( Up Against the Wall) Redneck Mother. Alternatively, to pump up the aggression, the team may like to sing along to the immortal lines:

You done stomped on my heart and mashed that sucker flat.
You just sorta, stomped on my aorta.

But there is really only one country song we should all be singing, when Jonny Wilkinson takes aim, and that is the unforgettable 1976 anthem by Bobby Bare:

Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life,
End over end, neither left nor to right.
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights
Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life.

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