Oh yeah, no doubt. But it's also not the "start". I seem to recall Ricki being involved in recruiting for quite a few years now so as awesome as this signing is we shouldn't forget the history of other signings :P
I personally don't think it's anywhere near as easy for a club based in Wellington with no chance of ever playing in the ACL or CWC or whatever, operating on the budget we are on, to go out and pick up quality foreign players as some people seem to think it is. And we have picked up some good players over the years for sure, they haven't all been duds obviously!
I just don't think that signing of Hernandez by itself can be taken as any great signifier of anything. There's lots of other stuff going on with Ricki's role at the moment and getting one quality player for next season doesn't mitigate all the other issues (player motivation, tactical shortcomings, etc). Given our recent approach we can't even be sure that Hernandez will see much ball because we are incapable of making connecting passes from our defenders and deeper mids to get them to a AM/no. 10 style player to create chances for a ball-playing striker (like Stein).
Just to reiterate: I am stoked about signing Hernandez! But I'm not about to say that this changes everything because it doesn't. It does, however, create hope that next season might be different. That is all.