It smiply doesn't work because your IAL isn't been updated quick enough, as you said with "takes a little time for the address to be stored". When you join a channel, without any fancy stuff like a /who or massive whois', and a user doesn't talk, or quit, or join, just idling there, and you go to kick ban that user, it will only kick but not ban because his/her address isn't in the IAL (this is just an example of why $address doesn't work sometimes).
If worst comes to worst you can just add error checking...
on *:JOIN:#:{ aline -p @window Nick: $nick Address: $iif($address,$ifmatch,N/A) } Or something...
And so on...
