COLCHESTER United are interested in signing Republic of Ireland midfielder Alan Judge, the Gazette understands.

The 32-year-old is a free agent after leaving Ipswich Town last month and the U's are understood to be keen on snapping him up, as they build for next season.

Judge, who has made nine appearances for the Republic of Ireland, was out of the reckoning at Town prior to the season ending as he had made 29 league starts and a 30th would have triggered another year’s deal.

The Dubliner is said to be settled in the area, which would increase the chances of him making a move to the JobServe Community Stadium.

Judge, who has made more than 400 league and cup appearances, started his career at Blackburn Rovers.

He has had two loan spells at Plymouth Argyle before leaving Ewood Park in January 2011 to join Notts County, where he had also spent time on loan earlier in his career.

He made nearly 100 league and cup appearances during his time at Meadow Lane before leaving to re-join Blackburn on a free transfer, penning a three-year deal in the summer of 2013.

Judge again found games hard to come by at Ewood Park and moved to Brentford on loan in January 2014, playing 22 times before making the move permanent at the end of the 2013-14 season.

He stayed at Griffin Park for five years in total, helping them to win promotion to the Championship in 2014 and was at the West London club at the same time as current U's director of performance Jon De Souza, who was academy manager with the Bees until 2016.

Judge moved to Ipswich in January 2019 for an undisclosed fee and made 91 appearances for the Suffolk club in all competitions, scoring eight times.

He made 34 league appearances for Ipswich this season, including 29 starts and scored four goals.

But Judge did not feature after Town's 3-0 defeat at AFC Wimbledon on April 13 as he was one start away from automatically renewing his deal, prompting Ipswich boss Paul Cook to say at the time that the situation was "not ideal".

Cook said: "I told him we are not in a position to trigger that extension to his contract and because of the situation, we won't be considering him for the remaining games.

"It's not ideal for us or Alan because I would have liked to have had him available."

Colchester are set to announce in the coming days which players they will be retaining, for next season.

More than a dozen of their current first-team players are due to see their existing deals expire, this summer.