The 89-year-old Attenborough is apparently unable to take up the invitation to attend the final, as he has just got back from Patagonia or something.
In his absence, the obvious thing to do is imagine Sunday's game as narrated by the great man, with apologies to him, and everyone else.
You'll have to imagine the spare-yet-expressive orchestral accompaniment for yourself ...
Like a spring uncoiled, the animal surges towards its target. Through a tangle of limbs, the pocock, or crook-snouted yellow wildebeest, propels itself across the grassy plain. Single-minded, unstinting, possessed. But watch.
The pocock is not alone in its pursuit of the giant egg - for now the egg is clutched firmly, jealously between the clawed feet of the black-hooded macaw.
The beasts confront one another, surrounded by their companions, two tides of muscle and sinew.
Every posture has a special meaning. Their immediate ambition is plain to see: possession of the giant egg. Yet at the same time these proud creatures betray a greater endeavour, born of a rivalry forged, if you will, through the ages.
Let us first travel backwards, if only briefly, to the overture for this incomparable exhibition of nature's brutality.
The participants, who have migrated across continents from their familiar South Pacific habitats, roam hunched across the pleasant pasture green, their eyes fixed, limbering, hydrating, focused on nothing but the imminent engagement in ritualised violence; contemplating, no doubt, the scale of the undertaking that awaits them.
The black-hooded macaw and its territorial cohort of reptiles, mammals, flightless birds and Smiths begin to howl. They strike their own bodies with a raw and percussive force.
Their tongues emerge menacingly from their mouths. Meanwhile, pocock, the round-capped moorekat, and their assembly of allies - a bevy of wallabies, koala bears, marsupials, spiders, snakes, crocs and ousted prime ministers - stand almost motionless, a mixture of respect, of energy, perhaps even gathering fury.
Both bear the scars of battles before. But for better or worse, today there will be no pumas, no springboks.
Some had expected lions, but none of any genuine ferocity have been found in these parts for years. Nor, today, will there be any salvation from honey badgers or beavers.
As the creatures commence their quest for this immense egg, a pulsating rhythm emanates from all around, as if echoing the tramp of the 30 true beasts.
The grassy plain is surrounded on all sides by throngs of other creatures, gathered in their thousands to witness this rare spectacle, the climax of a four-yearly cycle in bloody rivalry.
When the pocock rushes forward, its limbs entwined with the fearsome hoop-snake, a shrill, tuneless cry resounds from a horde of assorted animals, their skin smeared in crushed turmeric seed.
When the macaw completes its trademark metamorphosis from the moth larvae grub into a majestic swooping bird of prey, the black-feathered flock let out a roar of approval, before suddenly descending into a confused, arrhythmic clapping of wings and atonal Exponents songs.
And, over there, one of the strangest sights beholden by all nature: upper-class English homo sapiens singing an African American slave spiritual.
Later, these numerous non-participant enthusiasts will spill out across this corner of South England, great tides of emotion, returning to the soils through every available orifice their diet of copious fried potatoes and fermented grain.
For the participants themselves, the challenges are many.
Evolutionary dynamics have enabled the macaw and its accomplices to at last overcome a propensity to suffer breathing obstruction brought about by a dietary over-reliance on coq au vin, but they nevertheless face the unrelenting weight of expectation in their domestic habitat.
On the periphery, a pied shag roosts, as expressive as a stone, cooing indecipherably. Other, ostensibly friendly predators present their own risks.
Biologists call these segmented worms Fanboius premierstum but to our gladiators they are simply a pain in the backside, a necessary pest, characterised by their predilection, particularly at the end of the day, for attaching themselves to their host's skin, as well as an excitable attraction to bright objects such as camera lenses.
As so often in the wild, we witness a tussle of two halves. Mother Nature will ultimately prove the winner, but today, these two great rivals of the animal kingdom are near impossible to separate.
Suddenly, however, the black-hooded macaw raises a torn wing towards the giant egg. By sheer instinct, the bird flings the egg into the paws of the blank-stared tuatara, easily the most handsome reptile known to the natural world.
It drops the egg to the turf below, its foot connecting crisply, and the object flies up, up towards the cloudy skies. A tiny Welsh dragon emits its distinctive whistling sound, a symbol, for now at least, that the battle is over.
The cries from the gathered throngs are deafening. They tell their own story.
It is written, of course, unmistakably on their faces: half wear triumph, the remainder anguish; delight and despair in equal measure.
