PETER Carey hung up his white football umpire's uniform more than a decade ago, yet he remains a man of the rules.

These days the 55-year-old is the Melbourne-based referees' manager for the National Basketball League and the WNBL.

It is a similar job to the one Jeff Gieschen has at the AFL.

"On a Monday, after a round of matches, the phone is just in the ear the whole day. It's unreal," said Carey, who is profiled in the latest episode of the AFL.com.au series, Life After Footy.

"You have to have a thick skin with that sort of stuff, otherwise you wouldn't be in the game."

Carey has been a football umpire and a basketball referee for much of his adult life, but it was in footy that he reached the highest level. In all, he umpired 307 VFL/AFL games over a period of 25 years.

"My first game was at Collingwood," Carey recalled. "That was interesting to say the least.

"I suppose the early days for me were all about the suburban grounds. You still had Windy Hill, you still had the Junction Oval. I've got really good memories of those times."

Carey, who umpired four Grand Finals, including the 1989 classic between Hawthorn and Geelong, copped just as much flak from players as he did from the crowds.

"Chirpiest players? (Former Geelong and Brisbane Bears midfielder) Andrew Bews was probably one. (Ex-Collingwood skipper) Tony Shaw didn't shut up. He was always in your ear. And if Shawy was close by, you knew Darren Millane was just around the corner."

Despite all that, Carey enjoyed being an umpire. And nowadays he can chuckle about the most famous incident of his football-umpiring career when he accidentally took a chest mark in a game between Fremantle and St Kilda at Subiaco Oval in 1999.

"It was my 299th game, and I remember saying to the guys in the rooms before the game, 'I've got my 300th next week, so I don’t want any stuff-ups'. Yet I go out and do that!

"It looked as if I'd deliberately jumped up to catch the ball, but it wasn't the case.

"Anyway, it hit, it stuck, and I thought, 'What do I do now?' All I could do was bounce the footy, because it had never happened before and is probably never likely to happen again."