match problems

bagsmode

OK, I've looked up and tried to emulate the way wormi has talked about doing pattern matching, but it's not working for me. This is what I have:

var str= document.getElementById('unread_notification_list').innerHTML;
var patt=/You have [0-9]+ leads waiting to be allocated\.[\s]+Click here to open online allocation\./;
var $result=str.match(patt);

_click(_link( $result ));

I was hoping to narrow down by matching a containing div, the unread_notification_list, get the text from that via the pattern match since it's dynamic, and do the link from there.
I have to do a timer, but this works in doc ready:
console.log(document.getElementById('unread_notification_list').innerHTML.match(/You have [0-9]+ leads waiting to be allocated\.[\s]+Click here to open online allocation\./g));

I tried using that straight in the _click command, but that doesn't work either:
_wait(3000); // edit: doing this wait first to wait for stuff to load
_click(_link(document.getElementById('unread_notification_list').innerHTML.match(/You have [0-9]+ leads waiting to be allocated\.[\s]+Click here to open online allocation\./g)));

Any thoughts/help appreciated.

Regards,
Glenn