Pass custom _GET url variable into page template

I have a custom page that I want to pass a custom variable “player” into the page to populate an Iframe URL to get user statistics from an external source, I found this as my guidelines, But It’s not picking up anything I put as /?player=username only the fallback username “playerusername” in this case.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_query_var

This is my page source:

<?php
/*
Template Name: PlayerStats
*/
?>
<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php
function add_query_vars_filter( $vars ){
  $vars[] = "player";
  return $vars;
}
add_filter( 'query_vars', 'add_query_vars_filter' );
?>

<div id="content">

    <?php if(have_posts()) while(have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    <div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" class="entry">
        <h1 class="title"><?php the_title(); ?></h1>

        <div class="content">
        <?php  $player = (get_query_var('player')) ? get_query_var('player') : playerusername;  ?>

		<h2>Viewing PirateCraft Player <?php echo $player; ?></h2>
			<iframe src="http://stats.piratemc.com/single_player.php?p=<?php echo $player; ?>" width="100%" height="1200" scrolling="no" class="iframe-class" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />

            <?php the_content(); ?>
            <?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => '<div class="page-link">'.__('Pages', 'cpotheme').':', 'after' => '</div>')); ?>
        </div>
    </div>

    <?php endwhile; ?>
</div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>