The visitors piled on the first six goals of the match in a dominant opening stanza and managed to maintain a comfortable buffer over the next three quarters to run out winners by 35 points 15.11 (101) to 10.6 (66).

Rats' joint-coach David Hosking said the Saints completely outplayed Ararat in the first 15 minutes, maintaining possession and hitting targets in the right areas.

"It was disappointing because pre-game we spoke about how they would play the game and they did it as predicted, but our blokes just didn't do what we needed them to," he said.

"They kicked 6.2 before we scored, but from that point on for the remainder of the game we actually outscored them by three points.

"So there's the ball game."

Horsham pushed the margin out to 41 points at the five minute mark of the second quarter, with the Wimmera's leading goal kicker Gavin Kelm scoring his second major of the afternoon.

Two strong contested marks and consecutive goals from Ararat's own power forward Beau Cosson helped reduced the deficit at the halfway mark of the term, however the Saints' transition from defence to attack continued to hurt the Rats on the scoreboard.

"We were marginally better than in that first quarter, but not by a lot," Hosking said.

"I don't know whether they played the conditions better or if they just played better in general.

"They were just cleaner with the football, they ran it through the areas we expected them to and also through the areas that we like to run it and they delivered the ball much better to their forwards."

The Rats trailed by 49 points at the main break and the message from Hosking was simple keep your heads when under pressure.

"I really needed them to focus on getting back into the game," he said.

"That was about as bad as we can play, so the main message was let's start getting back to what we know we can do.

"It had taken us half a game to get to 40-odd points down, we weren't going to get it back in 10 minutes, so I just said don't try and do it all at once."

The Rats' responded to the call, with midfielders Jack Ganley and Dan Mendes leading from the front.

The dynamic duo each scored a major to bring the margin back under 40 points, before Ganley combined with livewire Tyler Cronin for another two goals.

Hosking said his side showed what it was capable of during the third term.

“It was frustrating because when you see what we did do in the third quarter then you know that we are as good as they are,” he said.

“Horsham Saints didn’t want to lose it though and I thought the final quarter was a bit of an arm wrestle.”

Ararat was desperate for the first goal of the final term, but as the visitors had done many times throughout the day, they managed a perfect delivery to the clean hands of Kelm who kicked truly for his fourth major.

“I think we needed to get the first goal, if we had have got that I figure the whole dynamic of the game could have changed,” Hosking said.

“I think they would have been under pressure and we might have been a bit more up and about.

“The interesting thing is, while I was really disappointed to lose, I still saw some things in the second half that gave me some encouragement.”

James Hosking and Jacob Bates were both reliable avenues for the Rats as they moved the ball out of defence and into the forward line, while Cronin and Cosson finished with three goals each.

Hosking also lauded the tireless effort of Dan Mendes and Harry Ganley.

“Mendes was typical Mendes — doing the grunt work, in and under,” he said.

“The best player in my mind was Harry, I thought he was pretty good. He made some blues and things, but we all do, he just battled away.

“There were a lot of blokes that I thought played better in the second half, like young Fergy (Brayden Ferguson) was particularly good in the last quarter.”

The topsy-turvy Wimmera Football League season continued at the weekend with the out of form Dimboola knocking over top side the Warrack Eagles.

While the loss has seen the Rats drop back down to fourth, Hosking said there is still a lot of football to be played before he and Andrew Louder can tell if the team has blown its opportunity of a double chance come the pointy end of the season.

“Probably a bit early to say. Looking at the results the way they’re coming in, geez anything could happen including missing the five,” he said.

“It is just a really tight competition.”