Robert Milkins handed £7,000 fine following Turkish Masters incident

Robert Milkins has been fined £7,000 following a drunken incident at the 2022 Turkish Masters which left him hospitalised.

The incident took place during the opening ceremony of the inaugural ranking tournament in Antalya on March 6, with Milkins having turned up to the event drunk on his birthday.

He then became involved in an altercation with guests at the ceremony, which was attended by a number of high-profile dignitaries and sponsors.

After being offered help by WPBSA chairman Jason Ferguson, Milkins later fell and split his chin in the toilets and was taken to hospital – where he had his stomach pumped.

At an independent tribunal June 9, Milkins accepted that he had breached the WPBSA Rules and his Players Contract, ‘bringing the sport into disrepute’.

Despite demonstrating significant remorse and confirming that he had made personal apologies to both event partners and dignitaries, the 46-year-old was fined £6,000 and ordered to pay a further £1,000 towards the costs of the hearing.

After securing his first career ranking title at the Gibraltar Open just a fortnight after the incident in Turkey, Milkins admitted his mental health was in a poor state following family bereavements and that he had been receiving counselling for the problems.

Speaking to Metro.co.uk in April, Milkins admitted: “I’m absolutely devastated with what happened. I still don’t really know what happened, I was completely out of it.

“Its been a bit tough and the worst of it all was when it got published. I was out of order, I hold my hands up, I’ve apologised to everyone and everyone seemed okay with me, but then it all escalated, it was everywhere.

“It was obviously bad, but I didn’t think someone 100 in the world on the one-year list getting drunk, falling over and being out of order would make the papers.

“I was devastated, but I can’t turn the clock back, I’ll just get on with it now and let my snooker do the talking.

“I woke up the next morning and didn’t have a clue what happened. When I was 20-21, I would go out, wake up the next morning, walk into the local and apologise before I even knew what happened.

“They’d be like, “What you saying sorry for?” I just get total blackouts like that. They used to wind me up saying I’d done this and that when I hadn’t done anything.

“I don’t really do things like that anymore, so it’s a bit out of character and it would never have happened, I’d never have offended anyone if I’d known what I was doing.

“When it made the papers that was a punishment in itself, but I made a mistake, I was a bit gullible and I need to learn from my mistakes. Whatever my punishment is I’ll take it and move on.”