Use of the theme.php?

[myuption]

Well i'm quute new to coppermine, so i'm learning everything :p

First, i have a joomla based site, so i want to use coppermine as my gallery... i already have them working fine, now i want to modify the theme to look like my joomla site.

Well, i based my fist theme in the connections theme, i want to show the menu in the right side in a column.
http://coppermine-gallery.com/forum/index.php?topic=34783.0

But somehow, i can't make the menu show up, take a look at my screenshots, first, if i add:

{CUSTOM_HEADER}{ADMIN_MENU}{SYS_MENU}{SUB_MENU} everything displays...

But if i try to place {SUB_MENU} in a table column, it doesn't show up! 

Why is this happening? am i doing something wrong?

If this appears together, the content in the theme.php is displayed, otherwise it doesn't. :'(

Can this be cause i'm using tables in my theme?