Racing star Lewis Bridger is used to grabbing the limelight at Arlington Stadium.

But the 19-year-old from Bexhill could break new ground as fans congregate for the Elite League derby with Lakeside Hammers at Arlington tomorrow (7.30pm).

There is a good chance he will be the talk of the terraces without even being in the country.

Bridger is expected to stay in Poland this weekend as he completes his two-match Elite League ban for missing last Monday’s trip to Belle Vue.

The British Speedway Promoters Association moved with impressive speed to deal with the matter once it became clear Bridger, who claimed to have lost his passport in Poland, had stepped out of line.

Working in consultation with Eastbourne chief Bob Dugard, the BSPA knew they faced a fine balancing act in striking the right penalty.

Somehow they had to hammer Bridger but not his club.

They did not want to sideline one of the league’s star attractions, and an up-and-coming Team GB rider, for too long.

They were sympathetic to the fact he would have come under intense pressure to have ridden in what was a re-arranged Polish top-flight meeting.

Yet the Elite League has already lost top names this year. The last thing they wanted to do was impose a lenient penalty which effectively said to other riders: “We don’t really mind if you race in Poland.”

Hence talk at one stage of a one-year ban for the Sussex teenager.

In the end it was two matches, plus a two-week overseas lay-off and a £5,000 fine to be levied by Eastbourne.

Bridger could not have chosen a worse time to jilt his league and club.

Eastbourne have been drifting aimlessly ever since Dugard revealed he would step down this autumn.

That is not Bridger’s fault. But anyone with the Eagles at heart will have seen the failure of their No. 1 rider to attend a league match as another nail in the coffin.

Since turning professional at the age of 16, Bridger had missed just four meetings out of 124 until this season. He is a local lad who has risen from junior reserve to No. 1.

And yet we now reach a stage where his grandfather Tony Thompson, the man who first put him on a motorbike at the age of two, has suggested he should quit speedway and resurrect a promising road racing career.

Where Marian Maslanka, the Czestochowa supremo who can make or break young dreams at the click of a finger, calls The Argus to check we are not being too harsh on the rider.

And that is the enigma with Bridger. We all know he can be a mature yet exciting rider and an intelligent talker, as he showed at the recent World Cup meeting against Peterborough.

“From the outside looking in, you wonder if Lewis has been taken advantage of by the Polish people,” said Jon Cook, the current Lakeside manager who gave Bridger his professional debut for Eastbourne. “Knowing Lewis as I do, he’s a really nice lad and a hugely talented speedway rider.

“The Polish can be very persuasive once you get out there and I suspect he genuinely did not understand what he was getting into when he agreed to ride.”

Tomorrow Eagles must do without him as they try to end a run of eight successive defeats.

And one wonders about the future.

We are approaching the time of year when Bridger, almost as an annual tradition, is linked with a winter move to Poole Pirates.

However, at the risk of outraging the Eastbourne management, the Elite League and those fans of Bridger he has not lost in recent days, one wonders whether his next step should be a more bold one than that.

He loves the excitement of a Polish league meeting. He is not averse to the money either.

“Poland is speedway,” he once said at a Czestochowa meeting.

Could next year be time to take the plunge, leave the goldfish bowls of the Elite League and of the Hastings and Eastbourne area and spend a season based in Poland, where he still has two years of his current contract to run?

In the meantime, his colleagues will aim to shock a Lakeside side tonight missing Jonas Davidsson and new signing Piotr Swiderski to the Swedish and Polish Championships respectively.

It should be a decent meeting. The whole Eastbourne set-up badly needs the lift of a decent win.

But don’t be surprised if a certain LB is mentioned somewhere along the line.

Eagles: Bridger r/r, McGowan, Watt, Woodward, Dryml, Gustafsson, Kling, Schramm.

Lakeside: Richardson, Swiderski r/r, Nieminen, Kylmakorpi, B. Pedersen, Morris, Robson.