Tape end came loose from cassette in player
 

I put in a tape, and rewound it (because whoever had the tape before is highly impolite). Started sounding a bit weird towards the end, and then when I pressed 'play' the VCR simply powered down.

Ejected it, and it again sounded a bit odd. Carefully pulled it out, expecting it to be wound around the heads still or something, but it came out quite easily...followed by the tape only coming out one side of the cassette.

The clear end that's supposed to be attached to the right reel has come loose:
Attachment 7785

Is there a fix for this? Any immediate steps to protect the loose portion of tape?

Okay, so I've managed, via crappy YouTube tutorials, to take the tape apart. The first one I saw didn't warn about labels though, so I had it working as a hinge and proceeded to lose the spring on the tape cover and the entire braking system.

Followed enough of the others to put the whole thing back together, but I've just got the whole tape on one reel at the moment. Plenty of info on splicing two halves of a tape, but I'm not sure how to go about a reel attachment...especially at 7am after no sleep. Is it as simple as just sticky-taping it on once I'm awake enough to do so? I think there's still a small flap of the clear tape attached to the reel, but not enough to get some room outside of the reel to work with. How close to perfect would it have to be?

Never mind, found this and managed to get it fixed. Plays just fine.