Despite playing 150 games for the Brumbies, if Leali'ifano thinks he'll be getting a warm welcome from former teammates, he is sorely mistaken.

"I can't wait to run over Christian this weekend," Scott Sio joked. "Bruzzy, I'm coming for you."

The trash talk has been firing in the lead-up to the final regular season game of the year where Leali'ifano will return to his old stomping ground in Canberra playing for the opposition.

"We've had a few little jabs here and there, but all healthy banter," Sio said of his text exchanges with Leali'ifano.

"At the end of the day we're really good mates, but we're also going to be fierce rivals for 80 minutes this weekend.

"Playing Super Rugby against him is weird and seeing him in a different jersey, but we've had the luxury of watching him play for Moana for the whole season. I think it would have been a lot weirder if we played them in round one."

Leali'ifano joined the Moana for their inaugural season having spent the last few years overseas following his departure from the Brumbies in 2019. The former ACT skipper has led an incredible Super Rugby and international career with 26 caps for the Wallabies.

In 2016 his life was turned upside down with a shock leukemia diagnosis, but following a bone marrow transplant he was able to return to the game he loved, and is still going strong.

The Auckland-born Aussie very nearly chose to return to the Brumbies before signing with the Moana, where he couldn't resist the chance to proudly represent his family's Samoan heritage.

In their first Super Rugby campaign the Moana have struggled to put wins on the board, though they have shown flashes of their potential, and Leali'ifano has been instrumental. Earlier this month he became just the seventh player ever to score 1000 points in Super Rugby.

"He's led that team really well," Sio said. "They've managed to gel and put some good results together, and we're expecting a fierce battle."

After back-to-back losses to the top two teams in Super Rugby, the Brumbies are looking to build some momentum in the lead up to their home quarter-final on June 4.

"It's a game that will really ramp us up for finals," last week's man of the match Tom Hooper said.

"We've got a couple of ex-Brumbies playing in that team so there's going to be a lot of feeling in the game. They're a quality outfit. There's no easy games in this competition."

On paper it should be just that - an easy game - which may tempt coach Dan McKellar to rest some of his star players for the trip to Auckland. Not so, says Hooper.

"We definitely don't believe in resting players, we just believe in the depth of our squad," he said.

"We've had a really good rotation policy across the whole season. If you see any changes this week, it's probably going to be more attributed to that."

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Hooper said the mood in the team hasn't sunk even after they copped some poor officiating calls in the narrow loss to the Blues.

"It's just the coaching brilliance of Dan," Hooper said. "He said as soon as we walked through these doors, there's going to be no sulking.

"He said even if you have to fake it till you make it, just rock out with a smile on your face.

"Obviously, we're disappointed. We're going to review thoroughly but we're very excited for Moana and there's a lot of learnings that we can take into that game."

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