The major carnivals in Melbourne and Sydney may be winding down, but Warwick Farm trainer Matthew Smith is already looking ahead.

Smith is eager to make up for lost time with stable star Headwall, who is nearing the end of his rehabilitation after the injury that cut short his spring following just one run.

The six-year-old beat Lady Shenandoah in the $1 million Group 3 Concorde Stakes before a pastern injury ruled him out of the eastern seaboard’s richest sprints, including the $20 million The Everest.

Smith used an AFL comparison to sum up the loss.

“It’s like when you’ve got ‘Buddy’ Franklin kicking goals and he does a knee, that’s what it’s like for us,” Smith lamented.

“You lose your best player on the team, your best earner, it’s tricky.

“He is still spelling for another month then he’ll come in and away we’ll go.”

Smith won’t rush Headwall’s return and said suitable races run through until late April.

After a luckless fourth in the Oakleigh Plate last February, Headwall finished second in the Newmarket Handicap, third in the T J Smith Stakes and runner-up in the $5 million The Quokka, which looms as a likely autumn target.

“It would probably be late autumn, he might head to The Quokka again,” Smith said.

“(We might) go back and try to get that on the board…but we will be happy just to get him back sound, get a couple of runs into him and see what happens.

“He’s a gun, the horse, if we can get him back.”