A new committee saved the club from the throes of financial debt the year prior, and managed to put together a premiership-quality side in 1999 - against all odds.

When Garry Todd took over as president in 1998, the club was tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

"As an ex-player and coach, that really bothered me," Todd said.

"We hardly had any committee left, everyone had jumped ship. It was put on me at the end of the general meeting to have a crack at the president's job.

"I said, 'Give me a week'. I went and recruited my own band of men and we set forth from there on a mission to get the club back in the black."

Todd and his team was able to steer the club back into a positive financial position in 1998, before assembling a premiership-quality line-up on a meager budget the following year.

"If I told you what the budget was, you probably wouldn't believe me," Todd said. "I'll just say it was under $10,000.

"You probably wouldn't get a coach for that back then, but guys came to the club and did it all for virtually nothing."

Shane Hitchcock and current president David Jennings came aboard as co-coaches and undertook a fruitful recruiting drive.

With significant financial restraints, the club searched locally and found a plethora of players willing to play for next to nothing.

"I think at one point we were about $40,000 in debt," Jennings said.

"We just decided to recruit the right people ... local blokes who wanted to play for the club. We were a little bit fortunate as the Ararat and District Football Association was winding back and it folded the next year as well. That helped us recruiting in the short-term."

Todd said the emphasis on local players held the club in good stead.

"The wonderful part of the whole thing was we had all locals," Todd said.

"Every player who could play footy in Ararat basically jumped on board. It was a big recruiting drive we had in '98-'99 and we turned it around completely."

Despite an optimistic outlook off the field, the 1999 season started somewhat slowly for the Rats, as they lost three of their first four games.

But a round four loss was their last of the season. They proceeded to reel off 15 consecutive wins and establish their place in the history books as one of the most impressive teams the Wimmera league had seen.

"I reckon we started off just okay - then we played St Michael's in round five here in Ararat, and I said to Jenno [David Jennings], 'I reckon we've got something pretty special here'," Todd said.

"We didn't drop a game from there."

The Rats stormed into a grand final against Minyip-Murtoa where they had an extra historical incentive to win. The Burras were trying to join Ararat as the only club to win four consecutive Wimmera Football League premierships - a record Ararat set in the 1950s.

But the Rats comfortably toppled Minyip-Murtoa by 50 points, ensuring they held the record for the longest consecutive premiership streak for seven more seasons until Horsham's unforeseen dominance in the 2000s.

Tim O'Shea booted five on the day for the Rats, Paul McLoughlan was dominant out of the middle, and centre-half forward Brad Keilar won the Greg Binns memorial medal as best afield.

Keilar may have been particularly eye-catching on the day, as he played the game with black nail polish on every fingernail. Keilar's girlfriend painted his nails the night before - a nervous decision he explained to the Wimmera Mail-Times after the match.

"That way I had to sit for an hour with my hands out and couldn't go to the fridge for a beer," Keilar said.

Earlier in the day, the Rats also won the reserves premiership, illustrating the strength of the club's playing list from top to bottom.

"We had a really strong team," reserves coach Matt Summers said.

"We had a few blokes who were in and out of the senior team... one bloke got dropped for the grand final from the seniors to the reserves, but he didn't get despondent or anything, he buttered up and played hard. That says a lot about the team."

The turnaround in the late '90s led to one of the strongest periods of the club's history, as they made four consecutive grand finals and won two premierships in 1999 and 2001.

But even with such a period of success, Todd couldn't help but look back and think about what could have been.

The Rats lost just one game during the regular season in 2000 on their way to the grand final. But they came unstuck on the big day, upset by rivals the Stawell Warriors by 10 points.

"We should've won four in a row," Todd said. "We had the best team every year, we just didn't play the best on the last day of the season."

Now entering the 2019 season, the Rats seem poised to yet again challenge for the premiership.

The club's positive position on and off the field is in no small part due to the efforts of those in the late '90s.

"It was just a real monumental effort from a handful of blokes that took the club from doom and gloom to quite a position of strength," Todd said. "The club has gone from strength to strength ever since."