Know the Ref - Hibs away

Last updated : 14 January 2009 By Stuart Gillespie
It doesn't seem to matter who you support, your opinion of him is that he's useless. Somehow he is able to do European matches, but he is a terrible official that infuriates most fans. A few months ago I was at a Scottish Cup tie between two non-league sides he took and he was still horrendously bad.

Anyway, onto the facts. He's only done one of our games this season - and we won! That was a 2-1 win at Caley Thistle, our first win of the season. The home side were awarded a first half penalty when Franco Miranda seemed to slip and bring someone down. Our record with him last season was quite good too - a Boxing Day win at Hearts and a draw with Dundee United at Tannadice thanks to a late goal. Maybe he isn't that bad!

In our first season back in the SPL he took charge of an early game at Love Street against United. We lost 3-1 and he sent off Barry Robson - a decision he came in for a lot of criticism for but was probably correct. Other games that year were midweek draws with Motherwell and Hibs.

In our title winning season he took charge of a number of games - a League Challenge Cup win at Queen of the South, a League Cup defeat to Motherwell and a home defeat to Hamilton. More interesting is a 4-1 hammering of Airdrie where an Airdrie player was sent off for swearing at a linesman. We were then given a free-kick from which we scored! He only did two games the previous season - a draw at Falkirk and a win over Airdrie.

The previous year he only took charge of one of our games, a 1-1 draw at home to Ross County when the visitors had a player sent off. That was actually Gus MacPherson's first proper game in charge.

Hibs haven't had much luck with Mr Brines this season - the only game of theirs he has done was a cup defeat to lower league Morton. Last season he did three Hibs games - a draw with Falkirk, a 4-2 win over Gretna (remember them?) when he sent off the Gretna keeper in the last minute and a defeat to Celtic.

He did a number of Hibs game in 2006/07 so it's a bit silly going into details of them all. Of note is a cup hammering of Gretna, a defeat at Ibrox were Ivan Sproule was sent off and a win over Celtic. Slightly better for Sproule was a visit to Ibrox in 2005/06 when Brines was in charge as the winger scored a hat-trick. Hibs lost a different game to Rangers under Brines that season as well as a game against Aberdeen.

In 2004/05, Mr Brines oversaw a Hibs defeat at Parkhead and a home win over Dundee. He did a few other Hibs games the seasons before that but nothing noteworthy shows up on Soccerbase.

From this, his record doesn't seem too bad - but he is an incredibly infuriating and inconsistent. With a red card average of one every four games, there's also a fair chance he'll show a red at some stage on Saturday.