COLLINGWOOD will still be required to head west for its 2009 pre-season competition opener against West Coast, but can stop in Western Australia after the AFL replaced South Africa with Perth on the fixture.

The pre-season competition was originally scheduled to commence at Sahara Park in Cape Town between the Eagles and the Magpies, but the AFL has deferred such plans for 12 months owing to the global economic situation.

The match will now be played at Subiaco on Saturday 7 February, commencing at 6.45pm local time.

"Organisations everywhere are revising their plans due to the global economic crisis and we are not immune to what is happening in the broader community," AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou said, earlier this week.

"In the current economic climate, we have not been able to generate the level of funding needed to stage the game. We are not prepared to take the financial risk in this climate.

"We will continue to invest in the game locally and we remain very strongly committed to ongoing investment in the development of the game in South Africa, which we believe has the potential to build a very large participation base during the next 10-20 years and perhaps within five years, be a new source of players for AFL clubs."

A match will now be scheduled in South Africa in the lead up to the 2010 season.

"The AFL and four of our clubs in the West Coast Eagles, Collingwood, Fremantle and Carlton have invested considerable development work into South Africa in recent years, in the first step to introduce people to our game," Demetriou said.

"The second stage of our development plans has been to take a full-scale match into South Africa, but we need to stage these games at a time when our current partners and potential new partners are able to join us."