Yup, sorry, my mistake.
staging-next is the name of your repository as well as
a branch within your repository and git after git clone
doesn't by default show all remote branches.
$ git clone --reference=linux-2.6 \
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-next-2.6.git
$ git branch -r
origin/HEAD -> origin/master
origin/master
origin/staging-next
I needed to add a git checkout origin/staging-next
--