Counting Bans Problem - Won't Show

[ZomgStuff]

Well I created my own page, /ban.php and I created a template for it.

The problem is, in the php file I have this

// Count the total bans
    $totalbans = $db->query_first_slave("
    SELECT COUNT(userid)
	FROM userban

    ");

That counts how many bans there have been in the past, not active, but total.

I've run the query in phpmyadmin and it works fine and returns 45.
The problem comes when I'm using my template, I use this

Total Bans: $totalbans

and it doesn't display a number. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.