Solved just now. Found that the unwanted content was coming from another tpl file, online.tpl

I ended up whacking the end of that file, all that was building the table for the Spiders. Results are acceptable.

Basically the same as the end of your post just above. Yes, appeared that the $tbclose was needed, and I left the final line as the <br /> tag just for good measure.

Thanks very much! :-)