Help with Search. Very Urgent, please help!

Ok I guess this is pretty straight forward problem.

In my list viewer page I use php get to get some values into some variables like so:
$quick_option = $_GET['varQuickOption'];
$start_date = $_GET['varStartdate'];
$end_date = $_GET['varEnddate'];
$match_type = $_GET['varType'];
$team_type = $_GET['varTeam'];

the problem I have is I want to be able to use these variables in the list viewers 'where' clause like so:

list($fixturesRecords, $fixturesMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'fixtures',
'where' => 'match_type = $match_type',
'perPage' => '15',
));

However I am having no luck. This gave me the error:
getRecords(fixtures) MySQL Error: Unknown column '$match_type' in 'where clause'

I have tried putting it like this: "$match_type", this '$match_type' and even this echo($match_type) but nothing works!

Could anyone provide me with a solution please? Any help would be VERY VERY much appreciated.

Cheers