Hugo Domingues was a regular player at The Millennium events from the very beginning, last playing with Lisbon Benfica. In 2012 there was an incident which involved Hugo in a violent act against a referee. In a subsequent hearing Hugo was banned from EPBF & Millennium events for a substantial period. At the time Hugo accepted responsibility for his actions, apologised and understood why a ban was imposed.
Since then Hugo has continued to assist teams in his native Portugal and still has a great passion for our sport. There have been no similar actions at any other events that prompted his ban. Hugo has approached the Millennium with a desire to be able to once again compete in the best series in the world and to do so has offered a large financial penalty.
After much consideration and takin into account Hugo’s love of the sport, assurances of no future freak moments and bearing in mind Hugo’s many positive actions, the Millennium is prepared to suspend this ban & enable his return to the series. Rather than paying a huge sum we have agreed that Hugo will continue his good work with young teams in Portugal and will pay a fine of €500 which will be awarded to the winners of the first Millennium 3-man competition in Puget 2015.
Whereas The Millennium’s first priority is to ensure the safety of its customers & staff, we firmly believe that lessons have been learned with the ban already served and that Hugo has earned a chance to enjoy the Millennium whilst he’s still young enough to compete.
This is what Hugo Domingues had to say:
“SAUDADE it’s a typical Portuguese Word that you cannot translate to other languages, but it’s the most appropriate way to describe my life for the last 2 and a half years that I’ve been away from the Best Paintball League in the World… THE MILLENNIUM PAINTBALL SERIES.
The best way to translate SAUDADE to English words is, trying to explain when you are incomplete or missing something at the point of not feeling able to breathe properly from missing something so much… and I could be here trying to explain how hard these times have been to me for days, since I’ve been playing the Millennium Series from it’s Beginning and only missed like 2 events since the Series started (one I got Married and was on Honeymoon and the other one my son was born)…
It’s with great regret that I talk about the incident that I’ve been involved with the Referee, and would like to apologize to everyone involved and ask for your forgiveness.
I’ve always been involved in Paintball since I can remember even when we were all still in the woods Playing MEGA CAMPO, TOULOUSE, MAYHEM MASTERS, etc… I’ve been around for so long that I can’t remember (No I do remember every game every event cause paintball is my life and my passion).
And it’s with great joy that after talking with various Millennium Directors, I would like to say thank you all for the opportunity that the Millennium Board is giving me to come back and feel complete once more.
I won’t let you down you have my word on it.
Your friend
Hugo Domingues”
http://www.millennium-series.com/paintball-news-608.html