Two men accused of a sex attack on a woman in Ipswich were seen looking at two other women as though they were “pieces of meat” while they were dancing in a nightclub on the night of the alleged attack, a court has heard.

Giving evidence at Ipswich Crown Court a woman who was at Degeros in St Nicholas Street with a friend described seeing two women who appeared to be drunk on the dance floor dancing in a “sexual” way.

She said one of the women had a low cut dress on and the other had a skirt that kept riding up and she allegedly noticed two men looking at them as if they were “pieces of meat”.

She said she had drawn her friend’s attention to the men at the time and a week later she saw CCTV footage of two men released by Suffolk police after an alleged sex attack on a woman in Ipswich and recognised them as the men she had seen in Degeros the previous weekend.

Before the court are George-hari Constantinescu and Danut Gheorghe, both 30, and of Farnham Road, Blaxhall, near Woodbridge, who have denied a charge of attempted rape and an alternative charge of sexual assault following an incident in Rope Walk, Ipswich in the early hours of Saturday February 25.

The court has heard that the victim of the alleged attack was walking along Rope Walk just before 3.30am on February 25 when she heard two men running behind her.

One of the men allegedly put his hands over her mouth and she was bundled into a car park.

During the alleged attack she suffered injuries to her head and face and lost consciousness and when she came round in a car park she was naked from the waist down although there was no DNA evidence her assailants had attempted to have sex with her.

Prosecutor Andrew Jackson told the jury: “It is the prosecution’s case that in those early hours these defendants were predatory rapists.

“They followed (the woman) into that road, and there attacked and intended to rape her,” he claimed.

The trial continues on Tuesday.